"I will pray that you trust God"

Last week at church, Charlie (my boss and our pastor) shared a story that I have NOT been able to shake off. It comes to my mind all the time. I keep pondering what it means to me. I would like to share it with all of you. I think it will mean different things to different people, depending on where you are in life. It is an encounter between Mother Teresa and a man named John. (The story was taken from Brennan Manning's book "Ruthless Trust")


When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at "the house of the dying" in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa.

She asked, "And what can I do for you?"

Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.

"What do you want me to pray for?" she asked.

He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I have clarity."

She said firmly, "No. I will not do that."

When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of."

When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."