I was in the midst of my evening prayers last night when I was interrupted by an errant thought about my morning blog. I immediately made a pencil note and got back to my prayers. So here I am this morning and thinking about the very first prayerful blog I posted back in 2016. I thought I might expand on it this morning, but when I read it, I stopped and said, how about just reprinting it, for it is more powerful today than 8 ½ years ago.
A Failure of Love (November 1, 2016)
How pleasant it would be if every moment of life were an expression of God’s Love, an opportunity to experience the truthfulness of the Divine. All of us are aware of God’s presence as we watch a magnificent sunrise, or sunset, hear beautiful music, or watch baby birds growing in a nest outside our kitchen window. How fortunate we are to be able to experience this magnificent godly love.
Our thoughts need to be deeper than just a magnificent sunrise. As Marie Howe expresses in her poem The Map, “The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.” This must include all suffering that we, as children of God, must address, or we do not deserve to call ourselves Christians, or Muslims, or Jews. In all our holy books, the call for love from God is strong; the call to welcome the stranger is the commandment.
Instead, we reject the stranger! Lindsay Hardin Freeman says the following in her novel Bible Women: “Fleeing one’s home in time of war is a heartbreaking last resort. Victims don’t leave for trivial reasons—because the price of food is too high. They run for their lives, in poverty, often alone, always in the shadows of death and destruction.”
These are truly victims of war; they are running for their lives. Can we honestly reject these people because they look different from us, call God by a different name, or speak a different language? If we are truly people of faith, we must reach out our hands to provide homes and comfort for these fellow sojourners. To do less is to violate Jesus’ second commandment: to love our neighbors as ourselves.
So now as 2026 comes rushing towards us, I again lift this up to our accepted standards of faith to convince ourselves to follow the teachings of Jesus and not the interpretations of some errant leaders.
Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.
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