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August 26
Melchizedek, Mother Teresa, and William James
David Barnhart
August 26, 2025
Tiny fungi, 2020. Own photo.
Today is the Feast Day of Melchizedek, a mysterious figure who appears in Genesis 14:18-20. He identifies himself as a “Priest of El Elyon” (Most High God), who gives bread and wine to Abram and blesses him. Abram in return gives him one-tenth of the spoils of battle, which is often identified as the origin of the tithe.
Today is also the birthday, in 1910, of Mother Teresa. She founded the Missionaries of Charity to serve the poorest of the poor in India, and she influenced Christians all over the world during her life. Only after she died was it revealed she also struggled with intense doubt, a revelation that in many ways only made her more relatable to those who admired her.
The same day in the same year marks the death of William James, psychologist and philosopher (and a personal hero of mine). He was a pioneer of pragmatism, and it is, in part, his notion of “saints” as exemplar that has caused me to write this devotional.
Today also marks the death, in 2015, of Amelia Boynton Robinson, a civil rights leader, educator, and an organizer of the Selma marches.
Reflection:
Dr. Amelia Robinson was asked why she attended the funeral of Sheriff Jim Clark, who authorized the beating of Selma marchers (when she was beaten unconscious). She replied:
“As the Bible says, 'Everybody’s your brother. Love your brother as you do yourself. Do good unto those who do harm to you.' And I look at Jim Clark as I do all of the other racists: Those people may not be totally responsible. Because they are weak and they live according to the way that they were trained. Many of them conceived in the bed of hated, and rocked in the cradle of discrimination. And when people come up like that, you have to blame the background as much as blaming the weakness of them. And there are so many people who are like that, particularly in the South, they are considered great leaders by the racists, and they succumb to whatever those racists want them to do, they will do it.”
Words from William James appropriate to our times:
“I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.”
and:
“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.”
In The Value of Saintliness, James writes:
“If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.”
Prayer: God, help us make the first step, and assume the risk of it. Amen.