Blog # 333 GREATNESS
Did you ever look back into history at certain great men and women with admiration, and say within yourself that you wished you had the opportunities these men and women had? Did it ever appear to you that you were born too late, or in the wrong place? If only I had the opportunities this particular man or woman had! What I would have done! If only I had been born in the 1st Century, like Peter ...
Actually none of us was born when or where we were born by accident as far as God is concerned. Nothing happens by accident with God. And so we can learn a great deal from how others achieved happiness and did great things years ago, but we must realize that for ourselves the time to be great and happy is not eleven Centuries ago, or fifty years ago, but now.
Each one of us has something God desires. And this something nobody else but ourselves possesses or can give. It is our love.
God doesn't need any great heroic deeds that we might do with the attitude we are doing God a favor. Back in the Old Testament times some of God's people were sacrificing valuable goats and oxen to God as if this were something God Himself had need of, and at the same time were being disobedient to God's will in other matters. God told them very plainly He had no need of their sacrifices, but He wanted their love. ( Psalm 49).
If God were hungry He would not have to tell us about it in order to get something to eat, for all the world is His, and everything in the world is kept in existence by force of His will. The people were neglecting the most important part of their obligation toward God when they failed to join their sacrifices with love and obedience. That too is what Jesus means when in Matthew (7:21) He says not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord shall enter he Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father.
So we ask ourselves today not how we can do the great works of Saints of old, but how we can share their love. Our greatness before God is our love.
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