A Moment Aside for 18 March 2021

 

A Moment Aside --- 18 March 2021

                                                                  

“Jesus, the real Jesus, taught us more than ‘Love thy Neighbor’. He didn’t leave us with a magical formula to solve all the world’s problems. He gave us work to do. ‘Love thy Neighbor’ is only step one. Justice, mercy, peacemaking, those aren’t warm fuzzy feelings; they’re jobs. Let’s get to work.”

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is part of the Great Commandment. The other part, actually the greater part, is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The first part permits the second and they cannot be separated. The picture above says the words of Jesus are not just niceties or suggestions; it calls them “work to do.”

It is work since we might not able to simply feel love for each and every person we meet every day. Loving people is hard. It can be real work. Often emotion and sentiment is not going to be involved, but an act of will and a desire to love. If we wait for the emotion, we might be waiting a long time and the love we need to give is needed now.

So what do we do? Wait for the emotion to move us? Grit our teeth, hold our nose, and get on with it? I’d like to suggest we do what we can, when we can, however we can. And when we can’t, we pray for the grace to do it anyway.

That prayer to be able to love might be the hardest prayer to pray. It might go against our grain and make us uncomfortable. So… do it anyway. It might aggravate us and possibly frighten us. So… do it anyway.

Loving God and loving neighbor is not a once and done thing. Nor is it an attachment to our usual lives. For Christians, it is our way of life. It is the way we lead our lives… and it will itch. Until we are overwhelmed with the Spirit of God, it will itch, and the Spirit might take her own time to come to us.

Here are the words of John the Evangelist on this subject:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

(1 John 4:20)

Let’s get to work.