 | ||
| Dear John, |
| If you are celebrating Easter today as my family and I are, Happy Easter! After all the hidden blessings found in the splinters, pain and lessons of the Cross, today is our day to embrace the JOY. No matter where you are, or your station in love, I pray that you are doing so. Now that I have reached a “certain age” as my grandmother would say, I rethink some advice delivered from well-meaning folks over the years. For example, “the journey is more important than where you arrive” crossed my mind this morning.Easter morning argues against that one. While there’s joy along the way in living the grace of daily obligation, it is the destination of heaven that makes it all worthwhile. We do catch glimmers of that destination all the time and I hope you catch those today. You are that glimmer. Your constancy and love in fighting for the best evidence of God’s joy, his children, is changing and directing the leadership of this nation.According to a priest who worked with Mother Teresa for years, her favorite prayer, and one she recited every day of her life, is one written by the great English churchman John Henry Newman. In it, it he speaks of that glimmer, that radiance that reveals the destination, the reason for the journey:Dear Jesus, Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go. Flood our souls with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly, that our lives may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through us, and be so in us, that every soul we come in contract with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus! Stay with us, and then we shall begin to shine as you shine; so to shine as to be a light to others; the light O Jesus, will be all from you, none of it will be ours; it will be you, shining on others through us. Let us thus praise you in the way you love best, by shining on those around us. Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you. Amen.Enjoy this day, John. Thank you for being a light to so many others by partnering with our SBA List team and sharing the privilege of this life-saving journey. And thank you for getting us closer to the destination of saving lives.For Life,   Marjorie Dannenfelser President, Susan B. Anthony List www.sba-list.org |
