Friday, November 21, 2008

Today’s text

Matthew 25:38-40

"When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, lacking clothes and clothe you? When did we find you sick or in prison and go to see you?” And the King will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me."

Reflection

The nobility of our call is to tenderly tend the life of God in the world where it is threatened on every hand.

The righteous in Jesus parable, who care for the sick, the imprisoned, the oppressed, don’t see or know the mystery of what they are doing. They do not care just for the troubled, but for the life of God that they bear, the life carried secretly by every child of earth and by all creation.

God does not merely identify with the lost of this earth. The lost--and all of us--are alive with the life that is God; the wondrous love that is in Christ resides at the depth of our being since we are made in God’s own image. That image is love, for God is love.

To care, to give the drink of water to the thirsty, the word of encouragement to those who struggle, the gentle blessing of a human hand to one who is sick or in sorrow, this is to nurture the life of love and hope in their hearts, the life of God.

This life is already there by virtue of their having been fashioned in God’s image but our care waters the tender plant so that it grows into greater abundance, the abundance of the life of Christ seeking unique expression in each created things.

Our care also expresses and nurtures the life of Christ in our mortal lives that we may be the fullness expression of loving hope that we might be.

In such care of the life of God, we find the nobility and joy that God intends. We become human beings.

Pr. David L. Miller