Cum Timore

Three passions have governed my life:  

The longings for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

/Bertrand Russell (adapted)

Here a man, with a mind as bright as the stars, and a soul as dark as the space between them. Not evil (at least by human standards), just without light (which is written to be synonymous with evil). And yet, him and I often feel the same.

Over and over again I am faced with the question: what am I doing with my life? Sometimes my answer is the most frightening thing I have ever experienced, because apathy is a dirty, dirty mentality.

And then similarly, my prayer to the Father to change my heart and mind and raise it from the mud of laziness makes my heart race in fear. That must be my fleshly self trying to get away with living in ignorance of the universe. I pray that fear will too be killed within me.

The only fear Christ ever experienced was the time of His separation from His Father. And for good reason! Hell is a rightfully dreaded abyss toward which no one should feel complacency. I pray that God will too instill the same insight (I think we call it wisdom, and the apostles called it sanctification) into my soul, spurring me toward action against inaction, driving me forward with the same intensity that burned within the chest of Jesus Christ.