MOTHER TERESA (The Pencil in God’s Hand) (Part 5)

A DYING MAN FROM THE GUTTER

Mother Teresa told the story of a dying man, half eaten by worms, who was picked up from the gutter and brought to the Home for the Dying in Kalighat.

“I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die as an angel, loved and cared for,” the man told the nuns who cleaned his ravaged body.

Mother Teresa didn’t need to know how the man had ended up destitute on the street. She didn’t need to know how or why he had been abandoned. She was concerned with only one small thing to offer the dying man dignity and peace.

GOING HOME TO GOD

After the nuns had removed the worms from his body, Mother Teresa reported that the man smiled broadly before making a final declaration

“Sister, I’m going home to God,” and he died.

GOD’S WORK NOT HERS

Although she dedicated forty years of her life to the Missionaries of Charity and saved thousands from destitution in the streets of Calcutta and around the globe, Mother Teresa always maintained that the work was God’s alone she was simply His instrument.

“I don’t claim anything of the work. It’s His work,” she said in a 1989 interview for Time magazine.

“I’m like a little pencil in His hand. That’s all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used.”

WALKING WITH GOD TO THE END

She died on September 5, 1997, fulfilling the parting words her mother had offered nearly seventy years earlier.

Through thick darkness, loneliness, and despair, against nearly insurmountable challenges, Mother Teresa had kept her hand firmly in God’s and walked all the way with Him.

The End

Tale Tuesday 137

Date: 8th July, 2025
Title: : MOTHER TERESA (The Pencil in God’s Hand) (Part 5)
Source: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know – Learning from Heroines of the Faith
Author: Michelle Derusha