“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.” - Mother Teresa
On my way to work this morning, I noticed everyone reading the newspaper…on the bus, at bus stops, on the street corners…every newspaper had the same headline: “Bush Signs Schiavo Bill” (or some variation thereof). Maybe you’re familiar with this controversy about whether or not this woman (Terri Schiavo), who has been in a “persistent vegetative state” since 1990, should once and for all have her feeding tube removed. She would literally starve to death. She’s actually had this tube removed before, then it was put back, then removed again, then put back, and now removed for a third time. Her husband has been fighting for removal of the feeding tube since 1998, fighting against her family and the governor of Florida (Gov. Jeb Bush). Now he’s not only fighting against them, but also against the United States Congress, President Bush, and evangelicals everywhere.
On Friday, March 18, 2005 (the same day Terri Schiavo was having her feeding tube removed for the 3rd time) at 1:00am, a young college senior was killing himself. He was an undergrad student at the bible college I attend. All reports about this incident are brief and uninformative, except to say that he “believed it necessary to take his own life;” and that no one really knows why - not even the dean who’d met with the young man only a week prior to his suicide to talk about the student’s future plans.
The irony of the situation is not lost on me. While hundreds of thousands of Christians were fighting for the life of a woman who will most likely never recover any quality of life, this promising young man was planning his own death...and no one noticed?? He was surrounded by Christians every day. The dean even commented: “He was well known, loved, and respected by his peers, faculty, and staff.”
We spend so much time standing on our principles, being right and self-righteous, that we end up fighting the wrong battles. Those hundred thousand Christians don’t know Terri Schiavo – they’re in uproar because the death that her husband wants for her violates their morality, but they’ll never have to hold her hand or pay her medical bills or bathe her or sit by her bedside each day, watching her deteriorate.
It’s a helluva lot easier to wage a principled verbal war than to suppress your own selfishness and stubborn independence and get neck-deep in the muck and mire of humanity only to have to sift through sin, poverty, decay and disease to find an ounce of something worth holding on to. This young man needed someone to risk something for him, to wade into some deep and treacherous waters and bring him back to shore.
I’ll go first and confess that I don’t know how to love this way. I started to weep just talking about this with one of my co-workers because I feel so intensely both a desire to be known and cared about and a desire to deeply know and care about others. Yet my greatest hindrance is fear…fear of failure and rejection by those I long to love.
So, I hope you’ll accept this as exhortation rather than condemnation, and that you’ll pray, as I will, that we’ll all learn to love the mess…
On my way to work this morning, I noticed everyone reading the newspaper…on the bus, at bus stops, on the street corners…every newspaper had the same headline: “Bush Signs Schiavo Bill” (or some variation thereof). Maybe you’re familiar with this controversy about whether or not this woman (Terri Schiavo), who has been in a “persistent vegetative state” since 1990, should once and for all have her feeding tube removed. She would literally starve to death. She’s actually had this tube removed before, then it was put back, then removed again, then put back, and now removed for a third time. Her husband has been fighting for removal of the feeding tube since 1998, fighting against her family and the governor of Florida (Gov. Jeb Bush). Now he’s not only fighting against them, but also against the United States Congress, President Bush, and evangelicals everywhere.
On Friday, March 18, 2005 (the same day Terri Schiavo was having her feeding tube removed for the 3rd time) at 1:00am, a young college senior was killing himself. He was an undergrad student at the bible college I attend. All reports about this incident are brief and uninformative, except to say that he “believed it necessary to take his own life;” and that no one really knows why - not even the dean who’d met with the young man only a week prior to his suicide to talk about the student’s future plans.
The irony of the situation is not lost on me. While hundreds of thousands of Christians were fighting for the life of a woman who will most likely never recover any quality of life, this promising young man was planning his own death...and no one noticed?? He was surrounded by Christians every day. The dean even commented: “He was well known, loved, and respected by his peers, faculty, and staff.”
We spend so much time standing on our principles, being right and self-righteous, that we end up fighting the wrong battles. Those hundred thousand Christians don’t know Terri Schiavo – they’re in uproar because the death that her husband wants for her violates their morality, but they’ll never have to hold her hand or pay her medical bills or bathe her or sit by her bedside each day, watching her deteriorate.
It’s a helluva lot easier to wage a principled verbal war than to suppress your own selfishness and stubborn independence and get neck-deep in the muck and mire of humanity only to have to sift through sin, poverty, decay and disease to find an ounce of something worth holding on to. This young man needed someone to risk something for him, to wade into some deep and treacherous waters and bring him back to shore.
I’ll go first and confess that I don’t know how to love this way. I started to weep just talking about this with one of my co-workers because I feel so intensely both a desire to be known and cared about and a desire to deeply know and care about others. Yet my greatest hindrance is fear…fear of failure and rejection by those I long to love.
So, I hope you’ll accept this as exhortation rather than condemnation, and that you’ll pray, as I will, that we’ll all learn to love the mess…
1 comments:
You're right. Being honest about our lives, even the lives of others - seeing them where they are and finding that hope regardless. I suppose the fear of love disappears in time, with the experience of love confirmed within and from above, no matter what the outcome. Our responsibility is love, the unanswered questions don't negate it unless we want that to be our excuse. Live life as the one we truely are, unable to judge another righteously, and finding love alive within us from the source of life. Words are easy sometimes - they just appear through typing, but I know that you really care about what you express, and it makes a difference. The best thing is trying to love, passing on whatever hope we are holding on to. When that hope is great - there is a lot to share. How can God offer such hope? He knows it all, but still speaks of faith hope and love - He's the wise one, if it makes sense to Him - it's worth is unmatched. If it wasn't for His grace and peace and holiness I could imagine he'd be screaming out our call, to love rightly, in an outpour of tears. Jenn, you get me speaking as if I think I know what I'm talking about - I just want you to be encouraged, I want God's truth and love to break through and annoint you. These are my reactionary thoughts to the stirrings this life cultivate within you. I think I'm saying that there is no other resolution to this life other than the incarnational intervention of Christ and the continued learning and daily living of us Christ ones. Plain as day I know - you make me rattle all this out on the screen, it's right that you ache with it all, and I guess I'm just proud that you have such a good heart and mind - cause you are my friend. And practically - Mother Teresa's wisdom is great. Run to the challenge of it.
Post a Comment