Daily Thoughts - 06/06/2013

Daily Thoughts: I have always liked the story that we find in today’s Gospel (Mark 12: 28-34). I especially like the end when Jesus looks at the scribe and says, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” It is perhaps the only moment in the Gospels when Jesus and the scribes are on the same page. There is a mutual understanding, a mutual respect at this moment in the struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders of his time. It is a nice thing to see. Would that this kind of understand and respect would happen between leaders of all kinds during our time.

The respect and understanding centers around the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor and we might say there is a third, love of self, because Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Jesus teaches and the scribe comes to understand these are the two or three great commandments and everything else flows from them, which might explain why we find ourselves in the struggles that we are in today.

If we just look around at our world, our culture, our society, our church the problems that we find relate to the way we live out or perhaps better said, don’t live out these commandments. Our struggles can be directly related to how we don’t value God and perhaps more importantly how we don’t value others or ourselves. We might even say that our struggles as a culture, society, church and a world can be traced to the lack of love that we have for ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves how can we love others, how can we love God?

Love is not just wanting the best for ourselves, others and God. Love is a respect, a reverence for life, for who we are as individuals, as a culture, as a society, as a church, as a world. Love is finding the good in ourselves, others and God. Love is seeing God in others and in ourselves. Love is seeing, acknowledging, and accepting the differences in ourselves and others but most importantly still being able to find God.

Our challenge today and every day is to put into practice these three great commandments. Our challenge is to wake up each day in love with God, our neighbor and ourselves!

Daily Prayer: Loving God, strengthen us with the power to love through your spirit in our inner most being. Fill our hearts with your presence and please do not leave us to face the struggles of life alone. Help us to grasp how wide and long and high and deep your love is for us. And, above all, grace us with the understanding that your love surpasses all knowledge so that we will always share it with others. Amen!

Runner’s Thought: As we prepare to run today and every day let us imagine that in addition to stretching our muscles we are also stretching our spirit and giving it the flexibility it needs to engage God. Each stretch is a prayer, a conversation with God.

Thursday greetings to everyone! I hope your day has started off well and that your week is going smoothly. If not be assured that you are in my prayers with the hope that things will get better!

I celebrated National Running Day yesterday with a 6.5 mile run. It was a gorgeous day for a run and there seemed to be more people out running than usual. The only negative is that I have a lingering sore foot that has me worried a little. I cannot figure out just what the problem is! If you are a runner I hope you had a little chance to celebrate yesterday with a run.

Well friends, have a great day. May whatever this day brings to your life be life giving. May whoever you meet bring a positive spirit to your day. May God’s love be with you and all those you love today and always! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr. Paul