glare.

I sometimes feel like all my efforts are in vain. I am sharing the gospel but nothing seems to come from it. I'm spending up to 3 hours a day preparing a seminary lesson and it just doesn't go as magically as I had hoped. I often base the success of my efforts on the responses or actions of others, responses which I do not control.

I read an excerpt from Stephen Robinson's Believing Christ today that goes something like this:

It is reported that someone once challenged the work of Mother Teresa, the holy woman who ministered to the poorest outcasts in Calcutta, India, on the grounds that she could never succeed at what she was trying to do. No matter how hard she worked, her antagonist insisted, there would be more of the poor and sick tomorrow than there were today, and all her efforts could never even make a dent in the problem. Since she could never hope to succeed, why did she waste her efforts in a losing cause? Mother Teresa's answer was a classic. "God does not require that I succeed," she replied, "only that I do what I can." And that is the gospel truth.

I'm always relearning the lesson of acceptance. There is so much I cannot control but I don't need to or even want to really. Controlling myself, my emotions, my thoughts, my actions is a challenge enough. I do not need to add other people or things on top of it. If I just do what I can, all that I can, it will be enough. I am enough.