Day 18

Well, I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous. I dared to do anything that was a good thing. I dared to do things as distant from what seemed to be in my future. I became a translator in Serbo-Croat in Yugoslavia, and I conducted the Boston Pops. I taught at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv in Israel, and I worked as a journalist in Egypt with the only English news magazine in the Middle East. All of that, and I come from a little village in Arkansas, smaller than Picayune, (laughs) and I was a young black woman, trying to do all the good things. When I was asked to do something good, I often say yes, I'll try, yes, I'll do my best. And part of that is believing, if God loves me, if God made everything from leaves to seals and oak trees, then what is it I can't do?

~ Maya Angelou  (our oldest daughter's namesake)

(taken from interview conducted via teleconference, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. http://www.nola.com/living/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2013/02/maya_angelou_discusses_her_fai.html )

A suggestion for your prayer and meditation:

God, help me to internalize, help me comprehend
that I am your child.

May I be encouraged by this reality.
May I courageously do good in this world
because I believe
because I know
that You love me.

Amen.
Pastor Patty Fox 40 days with 40 Christian mystics

It can be really hard sometimes to accept that God loves us- because of the things we've done, the things we've experienced, the things we've been told or the type of religious baggage we've inherited or grown up with. What have we not done because we thought we weren't "worthy"? What could we achieve if, like Maya Angelou, we come to understand how much God loves us?