So you want to make a difference?!

I am a public policy college major, type A school geek, a bleeding heart, a gotta-be-there-for-my-kids intensive mom, a love-everything-in-medical-school enthusiast and a save-the-world poster child.  I am DYING to make a difference in this broken world full of broken people (like me!) who need help.  I am dying to help change the world for the better.  But some days I STRUGGLE mightily with how to do this.

Do you want to make a difference too?  

In the lives of your family?  

In the lives of total strangers?  

In the lives of your neighbor?  

In the lives of people half-way around the world?

Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) wanted to make a difference too.  But she was imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz.  Before she died at their hands, she wrote the following on how to make a difference in the world. Today it was just what I needed to read:

"The world is in flames.  Are you impelled to put them out?  Look at the cross.  From the open heart gushes the blood of the Savior.  This extinguishes the flames of hell.  Make your heart free by the faithful fulfillment of your vows; then the flood of divine love will be poured into your heart until it overflows and becomes fruitful to all the ends of the earth.  Do you hear the groans of the wounded on the battlefields in the west and the east?  You are not a physician and not a nurse and cannot bind up the wounds.  You are enclosed in a cell and cannot get to them.  Do you hear the anguish of the dying?  You would like to be a priest and comfort them.  Does the lament of the widows and orphans distress you?  You would like to be an angel of mercy and help them.  LOOK at the crucified.  If you are bound to him, your being is precious blood.  Bound to him, you are omnipresent as he is.  Perhaps you cannot help here or there like the physician, the nurse, the priest.  But, you can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross.  Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart....The eyes of the Crucified look down on you asking, probing.  Will you make you covenant with the Crucified anew in all seriousness?  What will you answer him?  "Lord, where shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life." 

So you want to make a difference, Queen B?  Spend some time with the Lord today. 

Then get up, follow Him, and help change the world.