yours are the hands....

while looking up a 'st. teresa' prayer blurb i got in an email (it was kewl, i was researching it, thanks libby!), i found this one by a different 'st. teresa', and was quite moved by it. simple, and true:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours;
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
looks out on the world,
yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good,
and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.
~Teresa of Avila ~

can it be said any simpler what our role is here on earth as Jesus' body?

think you don't have anything for God to use? if you have a body - if you have feet, eyes, OR hands - then He can use you. and He can use me!

i've heard it said "God doesn't 'use' people"... the problem with that statement, is that it is coming from the soiled human perspective of people 'using' other people, and carries with it a bad connotation that will 'stick' with some people depending on their life experience, which is probably what was going on in the person i first heard it from (i've long forgotten who, tho). but the fact of the matter is in the bible God says He makes some tools for noble use, and others for ignoble.... but the gist is, all of us are tools in God's hands. He created us for a purpose, which can be totally encapsulated within the notion of 'to be used of God'. how He uses each one of us is different, but He had a purpose for our creation, and it is to be used of Him on earth as His representatives..... to be His body... His hands, His feet....

so, use me God, USE me!