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The take-home word for today is perseverance. What is perseverance?
Perseverance is not closing our eyes and crying and bringing our hands together and saying to God, “Lord, I depend on you completely.” That is not perseverance. That is dramatics. Perseverance is not simply saying our prayers over and over again. That is implied repetition.
What is perseverance? Let me use this example. There is a huge piece of rock in the middle of a running stream, rough-edged, and if one falls on it, one’s skin will tear. But because that rough rock is in the middle of a running stream, as water passes through it, through months and years and even centuries, that rock becomes smooth with the passing of water. That is perseverance.
Perseverance is to allow time to pass without counting that it has passed. Perseverance is trusting that we will get to the goal of a smoothened rock, even if it would take thousands of years to smoothen the rock with water passing through it from all sides.
That is perseverance.
Perseverance is not looking at mistakes but calling those mistakes learning experiences. For people who persevere, there is no such thing as a mistake. For people who persevere, there is only a lesson to be learned all the time. For people who are persevering, defeat can be disappointing, but defeat is never shattering. For people who are persevering, there is no such thing as a stumbling block. There are only stepping-stones to the mountain. That woman in the Gospel was blessed because of her perseverance. No magic words. She was rebuffed; it did not shatter her. It only invited her to be more persevering. She made a mistake because she was a Syro-Phoenician and Syro-Phoenicians should not approach the Jews. And yet that mistake was only a learning experience for her to be better.
We pray for perseverance, not only for perseverance to get our petitions granted but also for perseverance to do the good that we are supposed to do—unrecognized, unappreciated. We must be good because it is our nature to be good.
PERSEVERANCE
Mk. 7:24-30
Love Like Jesus
