Not So Lovable

Statue of Mother Teresa located in a small garden behind St. John’s Cathedral and adjacent to the Diocesan Vocation Office, Boise Idaho


















Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979. During his presentation speech, Professor John Sanness, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said:

The hallmark of her work has been respect for the individual and the individual's worth and dignity. The loneliest and the most wretched, the dying destitute, the abandoned lepers, have been received by her and her Sisters with warm compassion devoid of condescension, based on this reverence for Christ in Man.

His speech eloquently related a picture of how Mother Teresa and the sisters of her order put into daily practice the art of loving the unlovable. Jesus too set that example.
Matthew 9:10-17 NIV describes how Jesus ate dinner with tax collectors and “sinners” as the religious leaders called them. In fact Jesus was ridiculed for doing so. Jesus often times mingled with lepers as described in
Matthew 26:6 NIV.

During the Nobel Prize ceremony, Mother Teresa had a lot to say about helping the unborn child, the poor, the ill and many more people who were in great need. One particular passage of her speech stated:

When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society - that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult.

My paraphrase of her comments would be, those who are physically hungry can be relieved of their pain by simply giving them food. But those who have feelings of being unwanted, unloved, basically those who are on the outside looking in on the group have a pain that is not so easily remedied. These types of people are all around us, maybe in the cubicle next to us at work. It may be a person that so craves your attention that they’re appearing in your path at every opportunity, always asking you to do something with them, to the point that it seen that they are stalking you. They are not really taking the hint that they are just not someone you want to “hang with”. I will admit that I’ve been guilty of not wanting to hang out with someone because I didn't care for their personality or other reasons, numerous times throughout my life. How sad that I may have lost opportunities to share Jesus with someone who might have been searching for him. It may be time for us to check out the person in the next cube, or that next door neighbor with that barking dog, possibly that guy three pews over who talks a little loud during the sermon or sings off key at the top of his lungs.

Possibly you’re that person who feels like he or she is on the outside looking in. For you I would say that while it appears as if no one knows you exist, there is a loving savior who loves you, cares for you, who is interested in you, and wants to be in your life. All you have to do is say that you want him to be in your life & in your heart.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
Matthew 9:9 NIV