Forgiving on-the-fly: Following Christ for Exhausted People
God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Read MoreA Religious Experience: Following Christ for Exhausted People
Speaking of her first communion, taken at the age of eleven, St. Thérèse wrote this:
That day our meeting was more than simple recognition, it was perfect union. We were no longer two. Thérèse had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the immensity of the ocean; Jesus alone remained—He was the Master, the King!
—St. Thérèse of Lisieux
“Perfect union.”
“No longer two.”
“Thérèse had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the immensity of the ocean.”
This, I believe, was the source of power for this little girl who had lost her mother when she was only four years old. This union she describes so well. This union with Christ.
Even though she lived a life limited to doing only little things for God, she didn’t do them alone. Everything she did, she did with Jesus.
There are those of us who have, and there are those of us who will: every one of us will walk through suffering. This article is part of a series on exhaustion and exhaustion is itself a form of suffering. (Also, exhaustion often comes as a result of suffering.) The question is: Will we walk through suffering alone? Or will we walk through suffering with Jesus?
In my experience, walking through exhaustion and suffering alone is the absolute most miserable way to walk through suffering.
Walking through exhaustion and suffering with Christ has given me an inner strength to endure.
When I walk with Him there’s love in the midst of the exhaustion and suffering.
When I walk with Him there’s hope in the midst of the exhaustion and suffering.
Dear reader, don’t walk alone. Invite Jesus to join you.
Ah, how high you are in the heights of heaven, how deep in the depths!
From no place are you absent, yet how tardily do we return to you!
Come, Lord, arouse us and call us back,
Kindle us and seize us,
Prove to us how sweet you are in your burning tenderness;
Let us love you and run to you.
—St. Augustine
Notes
Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, narrated by Benjamin Crow, Audible, December 27, 2023
Thérèse of Lisieux, The Little Way: Reflections on the Joy of Smallness in God’s Infinite Love, Whitaker House, April 4, 2023
St. Augustine (Translation by Maria Boulding), The Confessions, New City Press, April 2, 2007
Image of a man helping his friend via Harsha K R — Creative Commons
Above All…
This morning I spent some time in the presence of a very wise and genuine Jesus follower. And at the end of that time, this is what I came away with:
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”
1 Peter 4:8
We learn by being with.
That is all.
How often do you think about God, and the shortness of life, and eternity? I was listening to The Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux today, and I heard her say this happened, when she was eleven years old:
The mistress at the Abbey asked me once what I did on holidays when I stayed at home. I answered timidly, “I often hide myself in a corner of my room where I can shut myself in with the bed curtains and then I think.”
“But what do you think about?” said the good nun laughing.
“I think about the good God, about the shortness of life, and about eternity.”
Later St. Thérèse would say she eventually realized she was “really praying, while my divine Master gently instructed me.”
It seems to me these things St. Thérèse is thinking about are the very most important things. For more than thirty years I served in a fire department where every day at work involved risk management. Before we run inside a burning building, we’re trained to run the scenario through this filter:
Risk a lot to save a life.
Risk a little to save property.
Don’t risk anything trying to save unsavable lives or unsavable property.
This kind of thinking is what allowed me and my mates to fight fire for three decades without dying. Which we always thought was pretty important because, as they say:
Once you’re dead, you’re dead forever.
Because of my career, I suppose that way of thinking is ingrained in me. Maybe that’s why, for me, Blaise Pascal’s wager resonates so hard (HT to my son Gabriel—thank you for giving me his book Pensées).
Life is short. Eternity is forever. And the eternal stakes truly are incomprehensibly high.
Now, if you’re not familiar with Pascal’s wager, I’ll ty to explain it briefly: When we’re discussing the question of God’s existence, there are only two answers: He does or He doesn’t. And we have two ways that we can respond: either we live with Him or we live against Him. When the end of our life comes, we’re going to find out one way or the other. If it’s true that God exists and we live our lives as if this is true, then we have heaven waiting for us for all eternity. If God doesn’t exist but we live our lives as though He does anyway, then we’ve lost nothing and lived a good life. If God doesn’t exist and we live our lives that way, though, odds are we’ll make ourselves miserable and then nothing happens, so at worst it’s kind of a wasted life. But if God does exist and we live our lives as though He doesn’t, then we’re really in for it.
Despite the oceans of ink spilled on the topic over the millennia, we’re not really able to definitively prove God’s existence, and we probably won’t be able to. We’re God’s creatures, made by Him. He’s too far above us to be able to definitively subjugate and prove beyond a doubt, which is why He reveals Himself to us. He wants us to choose Him, not force us to be with Him. And for this reason, Pascal says we ought to bet on God, because if we do, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and vice versa if we don’t.
The wager resonated especially hard after I learned of all that the agnostic-atheist Bart Ehrman believes is probably true from the Gospels (the list is in the Notes section). I mean, that’s somewhat of a minimal evidence approach. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic-atheist Bible scholar and historian, believes these things. Christian Bible scholars and historians believe even more. Check out Ehrman’s list in the Notes section for yourself. It’s surprising. One thing that struck me was that Ehrman believes it’s probably true that after Jesus was crucified, groups of people including his disciples believed they saw him alive. When I learned he believed that, I was blown away.
Former atheist turned Christian Jennifer Fulwiler put it this way:
“I started to think something explosive, something world changing happened in first-century Palestine.”
For her it was Aquinas and Augustine and other brilliant Christian thinkers that influenced her to come to Christ. While that’s true for me too, my journey to Jesus has been different. I was already a believer when I started reading the brilliant Christian thinkers. And I was already a believer when I learned what Ehrman believed to be probably true. And, I’m sure it wasn’t his intention, but what Ehrman believes strengthened my faith. And it strengthened my appreciation for Pascal’s Wager.
One hundred trillion years from now, even a lifetime of suffering will seem as a moment, perhaps comparable to a lifetime weighed against the time it takes for a doctor’s needle to pierce my arm to administer a vaccine.
It seems to me there’s way too much at stake, and there’s too much that points to God and Christ to ignore:
- The evidence for the life of Christ.
- The change I’ve experienced in my own life personally and the joy I’ve experienced that comes from following Jesus.
- The love I’ve experienced from other Jesus followers.
- The beauty that surrounds us. (It’s impossible for me to look at something beautiful and believe there is no God.)
- The evidence for miracles.
- The explanatory power of the Creator, the Unmoved Mover.
With all of that in mind, and with such monumental stakes, it seems like the best response I could have is the response that St. Thérèse had.
To hide myself and think. To hide myself and think of the good God, about the shortness of life, and about eternity. To allow my divine Master to gently instruct me in prayer.
I need to do that more often.
Notes:
Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, narrated by Benjamin Crow, Audible, December 27, 2023
Gary Habermas, The Resurrection Argument That Changed a Generation of Scholars, The Veritas Forum, 2013 (Right around the 50 minute mark things become especially interesting.)
Pascal’s Wager, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published May 2, 1998; substantive revision September 11, 2022
Trent Horn, How Almost Everybody Gets this Christian Argument Wrong, The Counsel of Trent, 2025
Lifelong Atheist Jennifer Fulwiler Tells of her Life of Scientific Materialism, and Christianity, Science and Belief Explore God, 2013 via GodRunning.com
Matt Fradd interview with Joe Schmid, Popular YouTube Skeptic Becomes Catholic, August, 2026
A list of what Bart Ehrman believes is probably true in the Gospels (From a debate with Jimmy Akin):
- Jesus existed
- Jesus was a Jew
- Jesus lived in the first century
- Jesus lived in Palestine
- Jesus was known for his teachings
- Jesus taught on moral subjects
- Jesus taught on prophetic subjects
- Jesus gathered disciples
- Jesus had an inner circle of 12 disciples
- Jesus was crucified
- Pontius Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Jesus
- Jesus was an adult in the A.D. 20s
- Jesus came from Nazareth
- Jesus was connected with John the Baptist
- Jesus was baptized at the beginning of his public ministry
- John the Baptist was the man who baptized Jesus
- John the Baptist preached a message of coming destruction and salvation
- Jesus agreed with John the Baptist’s message
- Jesus often communicated in parables
- Jesus preached about “the kingdom of God”
- Jesus believed he was the coming king of the Jews (the Messiah)
- Jesus taught a coming reversal of fortunes, with the exalted to be humbled and the humble exalted
- Jesus didn’t think you needed to scrupulously observe the Mosaic Law
- Jesus believed that the heart of the Mosaic Law was love of God and love of neighbor
- Jesus believed the way to attain the kingdom was love of God and neighbor
- Jesus had regular conflict with other Jewish teachers
- Jesus spent much of his preaching ministry in Galilee
- At the end of his ministry, Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover
- Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple
- Jesus was betrayed to the Jewish authorities
- Jesus had a follower named Judas
- Judas was the man who betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities
- The Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to Pilate
- Pilate crucified Jesus for Jesus calling himself “the king of the Jews”
- Jesus did not interpret the Sabbath command the way others did
- Jesus did not understand the Temple rituals and sacrifices the way others did
- Jesus did not think people should isolate themselves to maintain ritual purity
- Jesus said the kingdom would be brought about by a cosmic judge called “the Son of Man”
- Jesus said the kingdom of God has already begun
- Jesus spoke of leaving one’s family for the sake of the kingdom
- Jesus privately taught the 12 he was the Messiah, the king of the coming kingdom
- Jesus did not openly proclaim that he was king of the Jews
- Jesus did not understand his kingship as a worldly, political kingdom
- The Gospels preserve Jesus’ saying in the parable of the sheep and the goats
- Jesus was the one who chose the 12 disciples
- Jesus told the 12 they would sit on 12 thrones and judge the 12 tribes of Israel
- Jesus associated with tax collectors and sinners
- Religious leaders mocked Jesus for associating with sinners
- Jesus had conflict with members of his own family
- Some members of Jesus’ family didn’t believe him during his public ministry
- Around A.D. 30, Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover
- Jesus came to Jerusalem a week before Passover
- Jesus also proclaimed his message in Jerusalem at the end
- Jesus objected to the money changing and selling of animals in the Temple
- Jesus reacted violently to the money changers and those selling animals and overturned their tables
- After the incident at the Temple, Jesus suspected his time was up
- The Jewish authorities didn’t simply try Jesus by their own law
- Pilate was in Jerusalem at the time of Passover
- Pilate gave Jesus a short trial
- When Jesus was asked if he was the king of the Jews, he either answered ambiguously or in the affirmative
- Judas died an untimely death
- Judas’ death was connected to a field in Jerusalem
- After Jesus was crucified, groups of people including his disciples believed they saw him alive (Btw, this is uncontroversial among historians both Christian and non-Christian alike.)
This One Overlooked Attribute of Jesus Christ
God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Read MoreThe Good Shepherd
Hi everyone! Kurt’s traveling this week, so I’m popping back in to write this week’s article.
Kurt has been writing a series called Following Christ for Exhausted People, following The Little Way by St. Therese of Lisieux. And I’ll be honest, I’ve certainly been putting myself more and more into the “exhausted people” category lately. But I don’t want to focus on that today; rather, I want to get into something that has given me and my wife both a lot of life and has served to combat burnout and exhaustion for both of us. When we’re exhausted, as much as we’re able, it’s important to do what we can that leads us to restfulness, so we can better take on the challenges wearing us down. For my wife and I, one of those things is the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.
Most people aren’t all that familiar with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (usually just shortened to CGS), and so I thought that this may be a good way to introduce this to others. In short, CGS is a Montessori-based religious education approach for children from the age of 3 through to the age of about 12. It seems to me like more and more religious schools and churches of varying denominations are picking up on it, so you may have heard of it once or twice before. But if you’re not familiar with Montessori education, it was developed by Maria Montessori, the first woman in Italy to ever become a medical doctor. In her early years, she was assigned to assess children in Rome’s mental institutions, and discovered that the children there needed proper tactile and sensory education rather than simply incarceration, and so developed a style of education that not only filled these needs, but presented education as a whole in ways that fit with the way a child naturally behaves based on her observations of them: episodes of deep concentration, repetition, sensitivity to order in the environment, and a draw towards practical activities over just playing with toys when given a free choice of activity.
Maria was a dedicated scientist, which is how her educational methodology took shape. But it was her devotion to Jesus Christ as a Christian that she believed underpinned her work. She thought her method reached its peak in growing relationships between children and the God who made them, and that’s what her close friend and student Gianna Gobbi set out to do. Gianna partnered with Sofia Cavalletti, an Italian Scripture and Hebrew scholar, to take what Maria had developed and apply it to the spiritual education of children.
An important element to highlight is the degree of freedom given to the kids in a CGS atrium. “Atrium,” by the way, is a term that comes from the early Church, and was the place just outside the sanctuary that those becoming Christians would prepare for baptism and full membership into the Body of Christ.
In CGS, the children choose what materials to work with, provided that the teacher (or in CGS we call them “catechists” or “guides”) has shown them how to use a material; children are often told that they can work only with what they have been shown, and they respect that. It’s also often repeated that they don’t “play” with the materials; they work with them, as what we as adults see as “play” is the work of the young child, and it ought to be treated with the same dignity. There is a correct way to use the materials, but the kids aren’t assigned to specific works or tasks at all. They have the freedom to choose what to work with and how long to work with it. I think many adults are kind of afraid of what a kid will do with that kind of freedom, but in a prepared environment like an atrium, kids very quickly develop self-discipline that would make your jaw drop.
In fact, one story I heard from one of the early training sessions talks about an incident with one of Maria Montessori’s first groups of kids. She couldn’t make it to their school on that day, and so asked another adult to fill in for her. Well, that adult was having some difficulty getting into the classroom, and when the kids arrived, they helped her out and immediately got to work doing what they were supposed to do, entirely on their own.
Something else to point out too: the catechist or guide in CGS doesn’t really lecture or impart information the way a traditional teacher does. We’ll present materials and show kids how to use them, and we’ll proclaim truth when it’s appropriate, but we don’t often tell them what the “right answer” is. Instead, we pose questions that inspire the kids to think deeply for themselves and allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to the truth.
Just to give you one example, one of the most prominent works in CGS focuses on the Parable of the Good Shepherd. The materials consist of a wooden sheepfold, a wooden figure of a shepherd, and ten wooden sheep, all two-dimensional and made by hand. When showing for the first time, the catechist will read an abbreviated version of the parable of the Good Shepherd while slowly moving the shepherd around the sheepfold with the sheep following after him. We’ll then ask questions like “Who might these sheep be? Who said ‘I am the Good Shepherd?’ What makes him good?” or other questions like this that get the kid thinking deeply whenever they take the material out to work with it. And then, they’re free to use it whenever they want to.
For years while we were still dating, my wife told me about how great CGS was, and I had never seen it, so I just took her word for it. She had done an internship in college focusing on it, but never actually received the training. Then, about two years ago, she had the opportunity to receive the training. The only wrinkle was that it was in Minnesota, and not the close-to-northeast Wisconsin part of Minnesota: it would be a 7-hour drive one way during winter to get there.
So we went. I initially just came along as the chauffeur, since I didn’t want my wife to have to drive that far by herself in potentially bad Midwest winter weather, but I didn’t really think I’d be able to follow or get much out of it myself.
Boy was I wrong.
Within the first hour of training, I was not only invested in CGS but invigorated by it. The very nature of CGS reinforces from the beginning that you are good, you are valued, and you are trusted. I think if you’re in the market for something to give you life, I would highly recommend learning more about this. I have yet to actually use my training, but my wife has been using it now for three years as of today.
If you’re interested, here’s a link to the U.S. Association of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd:
And here’s more about Maria Montessori as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori
And if you happen to be in the growing group of people who knows a thing or two about CGS and caught me saying something incorrect, please feel free to correct me; it matters more to me that people get a proper understanding of CGS and just how wonderful it really is.
Even just writing about this has picked me up some, so hopefully learning a bit about something that’s given me some edification can do the same for you.
– Wes
The Good Shepherd
One example of the materials used to teach the Parable of the Good Shepherd in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
Read MoreMaking Friends Like Jesus
God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Read MoreI Want to Learn from You
So I wrote a book called Love Like Jesus. And because of that, I’m guessing some people might think I have a few things figured out when it comes to following Jesus. But the truth is, I wrote that book because I needed help following Jesus as much or more than anyone. In fact anytime I write anything, I’m nearly always writing to myself as much as I’m writing to anyone.
In some of my bio descriptions you’ll find this invitation:
“I want to connect with men who are trying to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to. If that’s you, let’s connect!”
What I mean by that is I want to learn from you.
Generally I find, when I’m in the company of men that fit the above description, there are no mentor-mentee relationships. People have different strengths and weaknesses and we all learn from each other.
So if you’re someone who’s genuinely trying to do those simple but challenging things, if you’re trying to love Jesus more deeply and follow Jesus more closely and love people the way Jesus wants us to,
Then I hope and pray you’ll connect with me.
I hope and pray we’ll become friends and fellow disciples of Christ.
Reach out to me. My email is kurt@kurtbennettbooks.com.
I’m Moving to a Place Where We Can Engage More
Greetings all my God Running (WordPress platform) friends! I’ve enjoyed the WordPress platform for a long time now, but, I’m excited to announce I’m doing something new. I’m writing articles and little messages on Substack. If you’re interested, you can find me here: https://substack.com/@kurtbennett
And, I am loving Substack! And I think you’ll love it too because it’s more personal and easier to engage with people. A bunch of my friends are already on.
Please come join us!
I’ll continue to post on this WordPress God Running blog site, but moving forward the God Running Substack articles will be posted a few days before the WordPress God Running articles.
Also, I’m posting quite a lot of additional content on Substack. This is content you won’t find on this WordPress site.
So please come join all of us over on Substack.
I’m looking forward to having some great conversations with you!
Kurt
If We’re Not Careful . . . : Following Christ for Exhausted People
If you have an opportunity to love someone in a small way, don’t pass it up! Those opportunities are blessings from God.
If we’re not careful we can trample on the small blessings God leaves for us along our path, instead of stooping down and gathering them.
Small acts of love matter.
Inspired by St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
The Tumbler and the Thimble–an Answer to the Comparison Trap: Following Christ for Exhausted People
God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Read More
