Thursday; October 27

In a list of the most admired people modern history Helen Keller is found near the top. Keller was born in Alabama and was struck by a debilitating disease before her second birthday that left her deaf and blind. Yet, Keller’s limitations would not stop her development as an individual and before her life ended at 87-years-old in 1968 she had left an indelible mark on society. The other day I was looking through a list of Keller’s quotes and came across one that I thought was impressive – even if it caused me a little extra work to understand it. In her work entitled, “The Story of My Life”, Keller observes, “It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow man, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”. Okay, this is where I had to pause and look up the word. Ennui is defined as a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. (See if you can use that in a sentence today!) The essence of Keller’s observation is simply that if we spent as much time loving people as we do fighting evil we could change the world! While I don’t know if this measures up to a theological standard, when you think about it, it makes human sense. Doubling up on our efforts to do good (fighting evil and loving people) is bound to produce goodness!

Let’s keep up the good work of standing up for what is right, but let’s enhance it by standing by people. When we meld good works with good relationships we can’t help but make this a better place in which to live.

Think About It!

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