I'd have packed it in for sure

Today the church remembers Pandita Mary Ramabai,  prophetic witness and evangelist in India.

 I decided to write about about her because her story so touched me that there is a message to be had for all of us. 

     At first I read her story like I had several episodes in my own life. Never ask "what could happen next?" Whatever cosmic comics there are, you find out and not always in the nicest ways. Pandita had one bad turn after another. I surely would have packed it in and crawled into a hole somewhere. 

     Pandita had many blessings in life but an over abundance of bad luck if you will. Pandita however comes to me more as a role model and heroine for all the things she accomplished and did in spite of what would bury most of us.

     So here's the thing. I am thinking of several people who whom I look up to, past and present, alive and long gone. There always seems to be some astounding odds stacked up against them. Generally it isn't like they really rose from mediocrity to greatness. They were held done, abused, suffered, cheated and so forth. With that going on, it's as if they put the bad stuff on a shelf and moved forward. Maybe that's too simplistic. Perhaps the 'stuff' was an ingredient of what moved them forward, then above and beyond what most of us accomplish in a lifetime.

      In many instances the catalyst was their faith as was the case with Pandita. It was the case with my beloved Saint Anna (previous blogs) or my friends Thom and Doug. T&D lived relatively quietly as a gay couple for over 45 years in a time when merely being gay put you on the outside. They lived out and proud, committed and loving lives and were minsters of their faith. It wasn't always smooth   ( at all ) but they were roles models and heroes that in part stemmed for their beliefs that they were beloved creations of a God whom they believed cherished everyone just as he/she created them.

     I could go on with countless other stories of people who have graciously touched my life and so many others. The constant seems to be our loving God. What more witness do we need?  A loving God who gave us his essence as his son.  Can we find strength to overcome anything in that?

      We know the two great commandments, if we can take that so to heart that it enters every fiber of our being it will affect everything we do. We will accomplish great things that we probably could not conceive or believe is possible.