Good morning…
“Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible,” Henri Nouwen’s morning meditation from yesterday joins our life-giving conversation. “But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators, and prevents a real community from taking shape. Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden. And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating.”
Speed is an issue for us. We want fast, feel good, fix quick. But lasting cure takes time, and our willingness to work together is an important part of God’s progressive process. Now is a fertile time to patiently wait, watch, and witness God building something new inside, among, and around us. I truly believe real community is taking shape, gradually curing long standing pain, caring about the stories, the struggles, the sorrows of those who are heavy burdened by illness, isolation, or injustice. Oneness with God, our true self, all people, and the whole of creation, from this place of compassionate connectivity will grow our only caring cure.
Remaining at home in God as God remains at home in us, how might we learn to collectively cure with care?
Galatians 6:1-3 (MSG) gives us some good suggestions. Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin (separating oneself from God, true self, others, or creation), forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.
We are living in a time when old deceptive ways are losing their power. God is paving our pathway forward toward a caring cure for all.
- Live creatively.
- Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed.
- Practice restorative forgiveness for self and for others when we selfishly separate from oneness with God.
- Work out critical comments (about self or others) with God privately in prayer until our hardened heart is slowly softened.
- Share the burdens (financial, physical, emotional, relational, spiritual) of those in need, consciously seeking to complete Christ’s loving law with our everyday lives.
Stoop down. Reach out. Practice restorative forgiveness. Pray through criticism. Share each other’s burdens.
I sense these humble habits rising to the top of today’s “to do” list. Cultivating these Christlike qualities takes time, time and patience with our growing selves and with God’s evolving world.
…Sue…
