Faithful Witness Doesn't Always Yield Results

Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. Psalm 69:20

We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made. But that is not the way of God's Kingdom. Often our witness for God does not lead to tangible results. Jesus himself dies as a failure on the cross. There was no success to be proud of. Still, the fruitfulness of Jesus' life is beyond any human measure. As faithful witnesses of Jesus, we have to trust that our lives too will be faithful, even though we cannot see their fruits. The fruits of their lives may be visible only to those that live after us.

What is important is how well we love. God will make our love fruitful, whether we see that fruitfulness or not.

Lord, help me to learn not to expect "success" in all that I do.

 And from Thomas Merton ...

Merton's Voice: The first chirps of the waking day birds mark the "point vierge" of the dawn under a sky as yet without real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in perfect silence opens their eyes. They begin to speak to Him, not with fluent song, but with an awakening question that is their dawn state, their state at the "point vierge." Their condition asks if it is time for them to "be." He answers "yes." Then, they one by one wake up, and become birds. They manifest themselves as birds, beginning to sing. Presently they will be fully themselves, and will even fly.

Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Image Books, 1989, p. 131

Prayer: Let the heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. 

(NRSV Ps 69: 34)