Prayer:
Merciful God, help us through your gift of healing to embrace our own brokenness, so that we may reach out to others with same spirit you reach out to us. Amen.
Bible Reading:
Romans 7:15-25
Silence:
One to two minutes
Reflection:
“Good morning, how are you? Good!” How many times has this interchange happened in your experience? And life goes on. Do you believe it when you hear the response, or maybe the response is as mindless as the inquiry, or maybe we are relieved to hear it because don’t want to get involved? And life goes on. Dare we image what goes on in the people we meet each day, the joys and sorrows, the sweet and bitter, the fullness and emptiness? In order to welcome our neighbor we need to embrace our own broken and healed lives, we need to be in touch with our own struggles and burdens. Not in order to unload them, but that they shape us into persons who share a common humanity, a common need, a common life, open to the other who is in need. This is the glory of a God who would be born a child, share the burdens of life and death, endure the hardships, and understand our ways. We surely have a God who knows our ways. Thanks be to God.
Action – Repentance and Creation:
So much of life gets lost by just living on the surface – the words, the facial expression, the façade. Make an effort to “look beneath the surface” today. No need to make up stuff, but be aware of the tone, the expression, the gait, what is going on underneath. Use your own experiences to teach you how to be sensitive to your neighbor.