Mother Teresa is a hero to me.  One of my favorite stories about her took place many years ago when she was visited in Calcutta by a seeker, John F. Kavanaugh, trying to figure out his direction in life while serving for about a month at her mission in India.  On his first day there he met Mother Teresa, who asked him what she could do for him?  He later related their conversation:

I asked her to pray for me.  “What do you want me to pray for?”  I voiced the request I had borne thousands of miles: “Pray that I have clarity.”  She said no.  That was that.  When I asked why, she announced that clarity was the last thing that I was clinging to and had to let go of.  When I commented that she herself always seemed to have the clarity I longed for, she laughed:  “I have never had clarity; what I’ve always had is trust.  So I will pray that you trust.”  *

I think Mother Teresa, like Jesus, recognized that different individuals at different times in their lives need different things to move forward.  At various points, clarity may be exactly what is needed to move forward.

Sometimes, however, the lack of clarity may be by design in order for the experience to become rooted in us in order to bear fruit.  And at the same time, sometimes even without clarity, we can take the first steps while trusting that God will guide us once we are on the way.

* I read this in I Am a Follower, by Leonard Sweet, page 124.  It originated from John F. Kavanaugh’s The Word Engaged: Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures: Cycle C, p 91.