Into your weak and feeble hands I have entrusted the Power beyond your estimate. To you has been given that which has been denied the most learned of your fellows. Not to scientists or statesmen, not to wives or mothers, not even to my priests and ministers have I given this gift of healing other alocholics, which I entrust to you. It must be used unselfishly. It carries
with it a grave responsibility. No day can be too long, no demands upon your time can be too urgent, no case to pitable, no task to hard, no effort to great. It must be with tolerance, for I have restricted its application to no race, no creed and no denomination. Personal cristism you must expect,
lack of appreciation will be common, ridicule will be your lot, your motives will be misjudged. Sucess will not always attend your efforts in the work with other alcoholics. You must be prepared for adversity, for what men call adversity is the ladder you must use to ascend the rung toward spiritual perfection. I shall not exact of you beyond your capabilities.
YOU ARE NOT SLECETED BECAUSE OF exceptional talents: and be careful always, if success attends your efforts, not to ascribe to personal superiority, that to which you can lay claim on only virtue of My Gift. If I had wanted learned men to accomplish this mission, the power would be entrusted to the physician and scientist. If I had wanted eloquent men there would have been many anxious for the assignment, for talk is the easiest used of all the talents with which I have endowned mankind. If I wanted scholary men, the world is filled with better qualified than you who would have been available. you were selected because you have been available. You were selected because you have been outcasts of the world, as your long experiance as a drunkard has made, or should make you, humbly alert to the cries of distress that come from the lonely hearts of alcoholics everywhere. Keep ever in mind the admission that you made on the day of your profession of A.A.-namely, that you are powerless, and that it was only your willingless to turn your life and will into My keeping, that relief came to you.
THINK NOT, THAT BECAUSE YOU have been dry one year or two years, or ten years, that it is the result of your unaided efforts. The help which has been keeping normal will keep you so just as long as you live this program which I have mapped out for you. Beware of the pride that comes from growth, the power of numbers and invidious comparisons between yourselves, or your
organization with other orginizations whose sucess depends on numbers, money and position. These material things are no part of your creed. The success of material organization comes from pooling of joint assets: yours from the union of mutual liabilities. Appeal for membership in material organizations is based upon a boastful recital of their accomplishments: yours on the humble admission of weakness, the motto of successful commercial enterprise is: "he profits most who serve best". The wealth of material organizations, when they take the inventory, is measured by what they have left: yours, when you take moral inventory, by what you have given."
Saturday, 24 December 2011
If God Spoke to A.A. He Might Have Said...
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