WATCHWORD:
37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ Matthew 25:37-40
Meditation:
Invisible People
Good morning. For some cockeyed reason, I got to thinking about the people in our lives that have no faces. Oh, they have faces, but they are invisible people. You rarely see them. They may live next door and yet…
Maybe, they lost their job, then, strangely, they disappeared, right there within your knowledge, and your awareness. Maybe, recently, they lost their spouse, and you never see them. The question is, when adversity strike others and we know of their plight, do we have an obligation to act, based on Love?
Recently someone sent me a book that was first released in 1946. My copy is 1952, and it is a treasure. The title is Death By Bread Alone. Early in the first chapter it speaks about those that are within the sphere of our lives that are alone; they want to be left alone, they are friendless, they distrust, they despise interruptions from others, and eventually…they become invisible, or forgotten. They live lives only by themselves, for themselves, wanting to be of no concern to anyone…
Well, you get the idea and the picture is not pretty. There may be no actual death, but the life within that person is gone. Death by bread alone.
What have we learned from this God-given isolation? Why is it that the things that we took for granted, seem to be the things that we initially missed the most. The things that we should have valued the most, and did not, are the ones we now cherish.
We will come out of this isolation different people. There are graces, because of what we have experienced, that surround us, but what happens to this better way that we have now been introduced to, when things return the way they were before? Do you follow that? It’s just another way of saying, are we learning anything that will stay with us?
Several days ago, I had a phone call from an acquaintance, who just wanted to talk — about almost anything. This person lost his loved one several years ago, and that void had been filled with a lot of things. This isolation had taken away most of those things. The person I was talking to was desperately lonely. I could hear it in his voice, and I could feel in the tension of even the attempts at humor.
Believe me when I say this, there are a lot of lonely people out there, many of whom you would put on a list of your friends.
This is not the time nor are these the conditions, where we should be assuming that other people, whom we consider to be close to, have better things to do then talk to you on the phone.
It’s been a long time since I was involved in practical psychology. But certain things within the texture of relationships don’t change. We need that human touch, even if it’s over the phone, facetime or zoom. Never underestimate the power of your voice in the ear of your friend. It is the sound of love! Stan
Bulletin Board:
For those who hunger for humor: Jesus and Satan were having an argument about who managed to get the most out of their computer. This had been going on for days and God was tired of hearing all the bickering. God said, “cool it. I’m going to set up a test that will run for two hours, after which I will judge who has done the better job.”
So, they sat at their keyboards and typed away. They moused away. They did spreadsheets. They wrote reports. They sent faxes. They sent out email. They sent out email with attachments. They downloaded. They did some genealogy report. They made cards.
They did every known job.
But just a few minutes before the two hours were up, lightening flashed across the sky. The thunder rolled and the rains came down hard. And, of course, the electricity went off.
After a bit, the rain stopped and the electricity came back on.
Satan screamed, “I lost it all when the power went off. What am I going to do?” He asked Jesus if he had lost his work, too.
Jesus just sat and smiled and calmly turned his computer back on. The screen glowed and when He pushed “print” all His work was there.
“How did He do it?”, Satan asked.
God smiled and said, “Jesus Saved.”
Closing Prayer:
Lord, we ask today for more of Your Holy Spirit in our lives. Lord, it can be easy for us to become consumed with the fears that surround us in life, but we know that just as Your eye is indeed on the sparrow, so also do You care for and see us.
Teach us today to become more reliant on You. Bring us into a greater discernment of how You operate, so that we may come into a deeper understanding that all we see with natural eyes is not all that is. Today we ask for eyes to see Your hand in all matters, and hearts open to Your work. Amen.
