This Sunday’s gospel story, often called The Parable of the Good Samaritan, tells us how to live well and be happy: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”* Obviously, sadly, there’s something most of us on this planet are not getting a lot of the time.
I have compassion for us. Life can make us hard-headed, and love can seem impossible. And yet Jesus again and again steps out with heart and arms wide open and makes mush of all our excuses to be and do anything but love. Live this way and you will know God and you will experience a joy like no other — my definition of eternal life, here and now.
Recently I revisited a beautifully written and illustrated children’s book by Jon J. Muth, The Three Questions, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy. The questions of the boy in the book, and those of the king in the original story, are essentially the religion scholar’s questions posed to Jesus in the gospel. The big questions about how to be a rightly good person – where, with whom, and how. In all the stories, there is unexpected grace and restoration and the “right” answer coming as one is present, attentive, and lovingly responsive to the person and situation at hand, moment to moment.
So what does this mean in my daily life of personal ups and downs, possibility and fallibility, and too in response to national and global upheaval? I wish I knew. But the answer does seem to be made manifest inwardly and outwardly with joy as I simply and truly live open-eyed and love my way through. Care, feel the pain, and take a life-giving step forward. Make space for joy.
-Trish Stefanik, Overlook Retreat House at Dayspring
- When you desire life and love for another, what do you feel?
- What nurtures in you a generosity of spirit?
- What does it mean in your life to make space for joy?
