Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Momma T you're more than a flute to me.

I haven't written in a while because I haven't really had anything worth writing about (since all my blogs are usually super inspiring, right...) Whatever, anyway today I have something to say, hopefully it's at least a little satisfactory.

So I'm reading this book by Mother Teresa called, "Come be my Light" about her life and struggle to please God within the hierarchies of the church and the darkness she often felt in ministry. As one would suspect, it's inspiring.

I was talking to Heidi Snow about it the other day in class and for some reason, I mentioned that I was reading a section about talking about how Mother Teresa was "nothing but an instrument." When I first read that I thought, man that's humble and it reminded me Jimmy Eat World's "Goodbye Sky Harbor" but I really didn't analyze it too much. And when I mentioned it to Heidi she said something like, "Well that doesn't sound very uplifting, just to only be an instrument and nothing more." And I thought something like well Heidi, that's cause you care too much about other people's feelings.

Today though I spent some time in prayer and I was thinking about what it meant to be humble. Are we really just instruments? And I realized that, no, there's no way I'm only an instrument. I've made too many mistakes, had too many times of hurt, and have too much of a soul to be nothing but an instrument. And I know it was even more true for Mother Teresa. God did not create me as an instrument, God made me a person, or for the sake of the metaphor God made us musicians. We are called to play songs of compassion, giving honor God and bringing notice to Love and Beauty. We don't downplay our role or sit quietly in the back, we play our parts as best we can and we try to keep in rhythm with the Music. Our humility comes not in making ourselves objects, but in realizing our being, and playing in a way that compliments the Orchestra, honors the Song, and doesn't upstage our brothers and sisters.

1 comment:

Katie said...

Maddie, that metaphor is beautiful.