“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
This is what we are each of us charged with, to love God above all else. Our own preferences, opinions, ideas, philosophies, etc. all take a back seat to this command. What our Lord has commanded us, is what we are to try to fulfill to the best of our ability – period. This is how we show love for the Lord. This is how we show our trust in His guidance and loving plan.
I find it interesting how each successive generation thinks that their situation is unique, and that the things that they deal with are somehow new and therefore beyond God’s planning and commands, thereby rendering them somewhat obsolete. People have been thinking this way, and trying to develop their own solutions and philosophies throughout history. It’s a bit of a joke really. The creator of the universe, the very fabric of what we call reality somehow missed some items that needed to be covered in His plan for us – I hardly think so. The reality is we simply don’t want to follow His plan because we find it inconvenient or incompatible with our own ideas. In other words, we are lazy and spoiled.
Think about this for a moment, if we actually followed just the first two of the ten commandments that God gave us – what would our world then look like? If we actually showed love for Him, and for our fellow man, and made these our first priority, what would our worlds situation be? We couldn’t very well go around killing each other or treating each other with contempt. We couldn’t ignore the balance of God’s commandments. We’d stop behaving like we alone are the only ones to consider. We wouldn’t covet what others have, or hoard the resources that exist selfishly. Instead, we would actually care for one another. We would seek ways to help those who were in need. We would concern ourselves with pleasing God and would demonstrate that concern by caring for all his creations out of respect and love. Our first thoughts would be for the well-being of all, because we would realize at a core level that we really are all family. I think it is safe to say that the problems, social dilemmas, and petty squabbles we seem to think so important would dry up rather quickly. We would be so concerned with welfare of all, that want, need, and poverty would not be able to exist. We would have in other words, a true foretaste of what we can only now look forward to in heaven.
The thing is, to get to heaven, we are actually called to begin creating a little bit of it here. We can’t sit back and think to ourselves that life eternal is something we can just wait for, and subsequently coast while we in this life. Nope, we’re not getting off that easy. Instead, we are called to begin, perhaps in small ways, but begin nonetheless, to change things in the here and now, so that God’s people (and by that I mean EVERYONE) do not suffer so much in this life. We are called to be kind, to look on even people we currently would define as strangers, with compassion and love, because the reality is, they are anything but strangers. We all have one Father. You can’t very easily pass someone by when they are in obvious need, if you are really embracing this way of thinking. It begins small for most of us, kind of like what happens around Christmas when all of a sudden we decide we might need to start being a bit more kind to the people asking for alms at the street corner, or in the parking lot. The thing is once it starts, it doesn’t, and shouldn’t have to stop after the holiday is over. The holiday of Christmas is never over unless we omit Christ from our lives, and thereby the Father. We live now in a time of great need, both in terms of material goods, and just plain caring. There are so many who are lonely and afraid. What does it cost us to show simple kindness? A few minutes of our time? If we look closely enough, and through the right eyes, Christ is there in everyone we meet, and we can actually show our Lord compassion, and perhaps place our own shoulders with His under that cross, and each bear a bit of its weight. That is the love we are called to show our God.
Podcast Link
The Deacons Bench 