A Simple Path by Mother Teresa

I recently came across a book titled "Meditations from a Simple Path" by Mother Teresa.  I was tempted to order it - I'm all for simplicity and simple living.  Then I noticed the sub-title:  Excerpted from A Simple Path.  Why buy excerpts if you can read the whole thing?  So I picked it up on my next library run. I enjoyed it, but it's a book to be digested in small pieces.  There were three thoughts that I excerpted for myself:

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.  We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.  There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.  The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality.  There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.

A prayer for family:  Help us to stay together in joy and sorrow through family prayer.  Teach us to see Jesus in the members of our family.

We all need time for silence, to reflect and to pray.  Many people tell me how difficult it is to find silence in their busy lives.  There is just too much noise in modern life -- and because of this many people are afraid of silence.  As God speaks only in silence, this is a big problem for those searching for God.  People try to fill the emptiness they feel with food, radio, television and keeping busy with outside activities.  But this emptiness can only be filled by God.  If we give time for God to enter this space, then our hunger can be more easily satisfied by just being with God in prayer.