Day 6

Today we flew home from Las Vegas to cap off a great weekend. We're all a little tired, but otherwise filled with a sense of joy and gratitude.

Yesterday's reading from Nouwen addressed something that I've always struggled with a little. In Matthew 22 when Jesus told the expert in the law that the greatest commandment was to love God and the second was to love your neighbor as yourself, I've always wondered just how we are supposed to do that. Especially when I think of my marriage to Kim, I can easily say that I love her with all my heart. And I've always justified this as being a different kind of love. The love I have for God is not the same kind of love I have for Kim or for my kids or the rest of my family or my friends. Is that right?

But here is what Nouwen writes about loving God first (emphasis is mine):

We must continually remind ourselves that the first commandment requiring us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind is indeed the first.

I wonder if we really believe this.

It seems that in fact we live as if we should give as much of our heart, soul, and mind as possible to our fellow human beings, while trying hard not to forget God. At least we feel that our attention should be divided evenly between God and our neighbor.

But Jesus' claim is much more radical.

He asks for a single-minded commitment to God and God alone. God wants all of our heart, all of our mind, and all of our soul.

It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people.

It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them.

We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.

Thank you Henri and thank you God...