I can get distracted, God, from your command to love my neighbor. Perhaps I need to spend more time listening than asking. You point me to the neighbor. You help me feel the poignancy of the need. You call me beyond my doubts and risk-aversion and you call to me: Bring yourself, your own creative, compassionate, called self to the work of loving neighbors. You don’t have to be everything, just be yourself. You don’t have to work miracles, just love. You don’t have to solve everything, just work on something.
What might this mean for our lives, dear God? Can we trust your provision, that we will have what is needed? Can we trust your compassion, that any and all are our neighbors, worthy of your love as much as we are? Can we trust in your power in us, that we can actually make a difference? Help me transcend my hesitance to answer your call to be of help, to respond with compassion to the needs of neighbors all around me.
This message is excerpted from “Transcending our hesitance” by Catherine Malotky in the March 2020 Gather magazine. Today is Christ the King Sunday. Today we commemorate Clement, Bishop of Rome, c. 100 and Miguel Agustin Pro, martyr, 1927.
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