Overcome The Finite With the Infinite

Ephesians 3:17-19 "May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may charity be the root and foundation of your life. Thus you will be able to grasp fully, with all the holy ones, the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love, and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge, so that you may attain to the fullness of God Himself."

Have you ever felt that God has abandoned you? You're not alone. Even the people you know are close to God have this trouble from time to time. Remember Jesus quoting the Psalmist, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46) And of course Scripture tells us that Job had many of these same feelings.

The shocking revelation of Mother Teresa's "Crisis of Faith" published in a 2007 Time Magazine article by David Van Biema, is a powerful contemporary illustration of God's relationship to His children. "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways and My thoughts above your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9)

Some professed non-believers interpreted her writings as justifying their atheism. But a closer look at her painful musings gives us a clear example of perfect love.

Mother Teresa, while working and caring for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta for decades, "wasn't feeling Christ's love and could easily have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, writing to Him, 'Your happiness is all I want.'"

Biema writes, "The tendency in our spiritual life, and also in our general attitude toward love, is that our feelings are all that is going on. So to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity, sacrifice and vulnerability."

No doubt Mother Teresa never forsook the encouragement she often gave to others, "The personal love that Christ has for you is infinite. The difficulty you have with Christ is finite. Overcome the finite with the infinite."

Paul's message to the Ephesians suggests to me how Mother Teresa "attained to the fullness of God" by having "Christ dwell in (her) heart through faith and with charity as the root and foundation of (her) life." She experienced His love which greatly "surpasses all (her) knowledge."

Keep Jesus in your heart no matter what comes and you will experience His love. "We walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7)