Afternoon Thoughts:

Why Compassion Requires Courage "How far you go in life depends on your  being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the  striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life, you will have been all of these."  -George Washington Carver (1864–1943) Inventor, agriculturalist, educator, and  former slave [Mother Theresa] once described herself in this way: "By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus." Mother Teresa also said she was "God's pencil — a tiny bit of pencil with which he writes what he likes." I like that. Being a little tool God can use to do practical things and speak for him to others. Some nuns who knew her in her earlier days described her as "quiet and shy." But she overcame her shyness because her focus was on the needs of others. This is compassion... Wherever she went in Calcutta, she found suffering; it was a place full of poverty and disease. It would have been easy for her to get discouraged and give up... Despite the overwhelming size of the problems, Mother Teresa never ceased praying and caring for those in need. But she wasn't alone in her efforts. Within a year, nuns started coming from all over to help the sick and poor and follow in Mother Teresa's footsteps. They cared for everyone from little children to the elderly to those suffering with leprosy. Over the course of her life, Mother Teresa became known as a mighty woman — someone who spoke out fearlessly about controversial things if she felt she could help the poor she served... She had just finished eating her morning meal and praying when the Lord took her home. I can imagine her walking through the gates of heaven as God smiled down on her and said, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" -Be the Change, Revised Edition: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World, by Zach Hunter