Toughness

Sister Thea Bowman (1937-1990), a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration; charismatic evangelist of the Catholic faith, was at age ten converted to Catholicism. As a young woman, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, studying at the community’s Viterbo University. In 1972 she earned a doctorate in English from Catholic University. She taught at every level from elementary to college until the bishop of Jackson, Mississippi, invited her to become his consultant for intercultural awareness.

In this role, she spoke throughout the country, giving presentations that combined singing, gospel preaching, prayer, and storytelling. She was giving over one hundred presentations each year before she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer in 1984. She prayed "to live until I die — to live fully." She continued her schedule in a wheelchair. In 1989, the U.S. bishops invited her to be a key speaker at their conference on Black Catholics. At the end of the meeting, at Sister Thea’s invitation, the bishops stood and sang "We Shall Overcome." In a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace she said: “I think the difference between me and some people is that I'm content to do my little bit. Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change. But if each one would light a candle we'd have a tremendous light.”

In 1989, a year before her death, she became the first African-American woman to receive an honorary degree from Boston College. Whether on the evangelical field in this country, or on the foreign mission field, the work of Jesus Christ has been magnified by martyrs willing to forgo the appetite for self indulgence in a country of plenty for foreign fields where the giving of self has often led to the destruction of their own health as is well documented in Fox's Book of Martyrs, Saints to Lean On (Janice McGrane) and many other evangelical magazine accounts.


At a time when comfortable church buildings have become deserted by “so called believers”, in a time when religious zealots are willing to destroy themselves as well as others to make a testimony for their religion, a time when Buddhist Monks would self-immolate as a testimony to their religion, the destruction of mosques, churches (mosques are still imploded, churches are still burned) to demonstrate to the world social irony of the absurdity pagans can exercise towards people of faith. Just as the destruction of life through abortion as a direct insult to the veracity and mercy of All Mighty God, so the destruction of people and places, seem to satisfy the heathanistic passion of believers and non-believers. We think we will get back at God for our inadequacies because he does not in every way satisfy our every desire. How easily we forget, that he witnessed the sacrifice of His only Son, One who had come from glory, put on a tent of flesh to dwell among us in absolute perfection, and then to give himself a perpetuation, an atonement for every sin, every disease of mankind.

All we have to accept, is his redemption. But, in our desire for self-destruction, our desire to live life “my way” (Frank Sinatra's song, all the way to hell), like the buffet table, we pick and choose and think we know best. God has warned us with every guardrail, every road sign, every beacon light, about the road to destruction but we choose to follow anyway.

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

More than ever before, the Christian church has the need for tough pastors, tough preachers of the Gospel, who are willing to present the gospel of grace through faith to a world mired in corruption, with only the hope of redemption through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. When Jesus was crucified, Satan and his cohorts thought EVIL HAD WON. We have that blessed assurance that whatever happens, those in Christ, are the winners.

My faith looks up to thee,
thou Lamb of Calvary,
Savior divine!
Now hear me while I pray,
take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day
be wholly thine!


May thy rich grace impart
strength to my fainting heart,
my zeal inspire!
As thou hast died for me,
O may my love to thee
pure, warm, and changeless be,
a living fire!
(My Faith Looks up to Thee, Christian hymn)