So often when we say “I love you” we say it with a huge “I” and a small “you”. We use love as a conjunction instead of it being a verb implying action. It’s no good just gazing out into open space hoping to see the Lord; instead we have to look closely at our neighbor, someone whom God has willed into existence, someone whom God has died for. Everyone we meet has a right to exist, because he has value in himself, and we are not used to this. The acceptance of otherness is a danger to us, it threatens us.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Lectio Divina - Eighty-Three
So often when we say “I love you” we say it with a huge “I” and a small “you”. We use love as a conjunction instead of it being a verb implying action. It’s no good just gazing out into open space hoping to see the Lord; instead we have to look closely at our neighbor, someone whom God has willed into existence, someone whom God has died for. Everyone we meet has a right to exist, because he has value in himself, and we are not used to this. The acceptance of otherness is a danger to us, it threatens us.
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How do we truly enter into the words “I love you” and discover how to act upon them, rather than just using them to describe a passive emotion? Jesus asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves. How do we translate this love of neighbor into meaningful action? Anthony Bloom suggests as a first step in this transformational process that we notice how we feel threatened by the otherness of our neighbor.
Loving God, help me to truly accept others, noticing all the ways in which I am not doing so today. Help me to see the darkness in my own heart, so that I may offer my heart up to you to be made truly loving. Help me to remember to pray for my neighbor and myself whenever I notice my own lack of acceptance, my resistance to my neighbor’s right to exist.
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