MOMENT...
We all live in the same moment. Everybody and everywhere, all over the world. Its something we all have in common. The moment can look so different for everybody, but it is the same moment. We get so focused on what happened yesterday or what is going to happen tomorrow that we let this moment pass us by, but this moment is all that we got.
In this moment I am comfortably in my home, with a roof over my head, food to eat, and clean water to drink. And yet there is someONE who has no home, does not know when their next meal will be, and has unclean water.
The way the world looks today is how previous generations have acted and reacted. How they responded to the moment before them. And the reality is the future will be how we respond to the moment in front of us.
OTHERS FOCUSED...LOVE
Society is self consumed. We are a very ME oriented society. It is all about how I can make myself feel and look better- what I want and what I need.
When you look at the life of Jesus, He was all about others. God's love is for everyone...every ONE.
His life was not cautious but EXTRAVAGANT. He didn't LOVE in order to get something from us but to give EVERYTHING of HIMSELF to US. LOVE LIKE THAT. --Ephesians 5:1-2(MSG)
That we would love like he loved. That we would see the value in the broken and hurting and the lost. That we would see a need and respond not of selfish motive or gain, but out of a love that flows out of our relationship with God. That we would not only see others as worthy and valuable but that we would know our value and worth in the sight of God, and through that we would be able to give as HE gave. That would would LOVE as HE LOVED.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers 1 John 3:16
It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering he did everything that needed to be done for everyone (Hebrews 10:14 (msg))
His love is perfect. We all crave the very same thing: Everybody needs LOVE. We all want to be loved and to be accepted.
FOCUS on the ONE
"You may choose to look the other way. But you can never say that you did not know." - William Wilberforce
Let us not look away. Let us see the need in front of us and choose to do something. We can each play our part. We each have a role to play in the story of God. If it is saying hello to the lonely widow in the grocery store, or it could be befriending someone who isn't well liked. It could be serving at a homeless shelter or traveling across the world to love an orphan. Let us look for the ONE. God knows each ONE and loves each ONE.
"We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our cpabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it ver well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own."
May the STORY of OUR LIVES REFLECT THE WONDER OF JESUS' NAME. AMEN.
