February 6, 2010 - Mark 12:29-31

What does the Lord require of thee today?

"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength....You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

Wow...kind of a tall order. ALL my heart? ALL my soul? ALL my mind and my strength? And sometimes I don't even like my neighbor very much, let alone love him. How can I possibly adhere to the commandments of which there is none greater? It seems an impractical, if not impossible, task. How on earth can I do that? I mean, maybe if I were a nun, and all I had to do all day was pray.... But I'm not. I have dogs, family, a job. My affections are scattered all over the place, not concentrated on God alone.

A passage like this brings me up short - it reminds me how very far away I am from being the person God intends me to be. God wouldn't have asked this of us if He didn't think we could do it, right?

Ok, so let's go there. If God says to love Him with all our hearts, soul, minds and strength, there must be a way to do so, and still live our daily lives. And there, I think, is the answer. It is smack dab in the middle of our daily lives that the love of God needs to be. When I look at my boss, do I see and love God? When I take my dogs for a walk, do I see and love God in my dogs and in nature? When I read a good old-fashioned murder mystery, is my soul loving God at the same time? When I'm brushing my teeth in the morning, making coffee, leading a Weight Watcher meeting, am I loving God with all my strength?

Mother Teresa was an exceptional woman. She saw the face of Christ in the most poor and wretched of humanity. She tended the wounds of lepers as if she were wiping the wounds of Christ. I think perhaps it is in loving what and whom God has placed in our lives, we learn to love God with all that we have. The trick, of course, is loving God in the unloveable. The co-worker who drives us nuts; the jerk that cuts us off in traffic; the surly cashier; the lousy waitress; to borrow a line from a popular Christian song, "My Jesus says to love them anyway."

Yep, it's still a tall order. I'm not convinced that even Mother Teresa got it right one-hundred percent of the time. But each day is a new day, and a new opportunity to love God, no matter where and under what circumstances we may find Him.