Faith, Hope, and Love

I found a passage by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian of the 20th century, that I really liked. He said that nothing of any lasting significant value could be achieved by a person in a single life time. So we are always living and working in faith that what we do will matter enough that somebody else will continue it. There was a woman dedicated to helping convicts who were released from prison. She was the founder of an organization. She worked on it for many years. Then someone told her that she really need to turn it loose. To step away and to see if other people valued it enough to keep it going. Because if it was not important enough for others to continue it was not going to last past her working years. We have to work and live in faith.

Niebuhr said that nothing we do of moral significance makes sense within the immediate context of history. So we always have to act in hope. That is, in the midst of the swirling ambiguities of the immediate situation, the proper moral action may not always be visible or may not look like the right thing to do. I have never flown a plane but I have read that in the higher altitudes you have to trust your instruments because your senses cannot tell you where you are or what you need to do. There are moral questions where all your feelings and desires may not tell you what is right and so you have to make moral decision on principles and hope they are good. Faith, hope.

There is nothing of importance or value that we can do alone. One person can make a world of difference: Dr. King, Gandhi, Mandela, but none of them worked alone. They inspired and recruited others. They gave brought people together. They showed us how to work together. Nothing can be done alone and so in the end we have to work in love of others. Love is the equally valuing the contribution of others as much as we value what we do. So in order to achieve what is our heart's desire we have to work with others and so work in love.

Faith, hope and love. St. Paul was right. These three.