Holy Moments – Day 5 – Opportunity

Sometimes we are called to rise to the occasion. Globally, this is happening right now.

I know, I know…The people – the Syrian refugees – are far away. They are not walking our roads in search of food, shelter, and new lives. So it’s easy to ignore them. Or even to think one can justify contemptuous feelings when a tiny, tiny minority of them have refused help because it came in packages marked with red crosses.

But – when we choose not to turn the TV off. Or when we choose to take a good, long look at the videos. And at the heartbreaking photographs. And when we sit still long enough to listen to the whisper inside, we know that we are being called.

Jesus told us:

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. – John 13: 34-35

Easy? Hardly. Notice that He didn’t give us a choice about who to love. We are told to love everyone.

And for many of us, loving like Christ goes something like this:

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” – G. K. Chesterton 

What did Jesus say again? Put into simplest terms: They will know you are Christians when you love like I do.

Can I love like He does? Only with His help. And that’s a challenge – even on my ‘best’ days. But He didn’t say, “Here’s a suggestion.” He said, “I give you a new commandment.” So my question should only be – ‘How will I obey?’

Could this be the world’s holy moment? I think so. A moment we are being asked to rise to perform acts of sacred love. Acts set apart from the norm. Acts of real love – that is, selfless love. Defined by the fact that they demand no thanks. 

Watch this.

Voyage to a Second Life

The Heart of the Matter

I saw something this morning that made me want to vomit. Two investigators from the Center for Medical Progress went undercover and interviewed a director of Planned Parenthood who discusses on video – over wine and salad – the systematic harvesting and selling of body parts from babies she and others abort. Apparently, livers and hearts are in especially large demand. And she’s careful not to crush these valuable commodities during the “extraction” process from each mother’s womb, which she describes, in detail. By dinnertime today, this story was all over the national news, and media outlets were reporting that the director “allegedly” sold these baby body parts. But I watched the video. I’m taking her at her word.

People have all sorts of arguments for the slaughter of the innocents. But as I said when I shared this story with Facebook Friends, evil cannot grow where there is Light. For me, before today, the selling of body parts of aborted children fell into that category of: “I guess I knew that could happen, theoretically speaking, but who would actually do it?” Now, my idealistic ignorance has abruptly ended and nausea has given way to a rising, righteous anger.

Righteous anger. Yes. I’m going to claim the moral high ground on this one and say I am righteously angry. I’m not just plain-old ‘mad,’ because someone holds a different point of view. Killing and dismembering an infant shocks the senses because it violates the natural law – that inborn sense of right and wrong that we were all given. And from which we all go astray through sin. But allowing sin of this magnitude to continue without rising up to point out that it is grievous and heinous is a communal sin against God, is it not?

Am I called to love my neighbor as myself? Yes. And aren’t you too?

Is the unborn child our neighbor? I think so.

I’ve been wondering all day where to go with this…What to say or do next. I think it comes down to a basic statement and a few questions for our nation.

Fellow Americans, and Christians especially:

The hearts of unwanted, unborn children are literally, up for sale.

Is yours?

Will you sell out to the public opinion, which says that the unborn aren’t worth protecting?

To Whom does your heart belong?

And how will you show your love?

My heart belongs to the Lord, maker of Heaven and Earth. Maker of me. And so I sing His praises. And cry out with righteous anger on behalf of the Voiceless, who are also created in His image.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

— Matthew 22: 36-39

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