Audacity to Believe

It must have been three decades ago that I read a book that moved me and influenced the way I think. Audacity to Believe by Sheila Cassidy, an English physician, who was working in Chile in the early 1970s. During a military coup she was arrested with thousands of others and put in a prison camp. She underwent excruciating physical and mental torture.

 

She almost gave up on life. But one day a new thought came to her. Instead of battering on the bars of her prison she decided to hold out her "empty hands to God, not in supplication but in offering." She said:

 

I would say, not 'Please let me out' but, 'Here I am lord, take me. I trust you. Do with me what you will.' In my powerlessness and captivity there remained to me one freedom: I could abandon myself into the hands of God.

 

Cassidy said that from that moment on a gradual change took place in her attitude and she felt strengthened and full of courage.

 

She used this analogy: Like a bird in a cage we can choose to exhaust ourselves by battering our wings against the bars—or we can learn to live within the confines of our 'prison' and find, to our surprise, that we have strength to sing.

 

After Sheila Cassidy was finally released, she went on to help many people find healing.

 

Faith does not keep us from suffering. Sometimes for no reason we get 'locked up' in trying circumstances. Like the bird in the cage we decide either to batter against the cage or to accept the reality of the situation and learn to sing in spite of it.

 

Battering our wings—or sing? Which will it be?