July 2020
Reflections of God's Goodness
It has been difficult to stay home and stay away from family and friends. I hear people’s discouragement. They want to see their children and grandchildren and they want to visit with their friends. They are tired of staying home.
As we begin to come back together in our church communities, neighborhoods, and cities, we need to ask ourselves, what do we want to get back to? What have we learned and experienced during this isolation?
I believe we are being challenged to “go out into the deep” – to look at our lives in a deeper way. How do we want our cities and our culture to be different as a result of this once-in-a-lifetime experience?
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."
How can we learn to show love in a world filled with anger, disagreement, rudeness, and lack of faith? We cannot do it on our own. Jesus told us that the law of God is summed up in two commandments:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...And you shall love your neighbors as yourself." ”
What will it take? How can we begin to do a better job of caring for one another?
First, I think it takes living an examined life! We need to reflect on our own responses to life and to the people we encounter. When we look at our own behaviors, thoughts, and actions, and hold them up to the light of God’s Word, we will begin to know God and ourselves better.
The Scriptures help us to know “the mind of God.”
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous. (Love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
This is the love that God calls us to give to one another. Not just to our family and friends, but to everyone! May the ability to love and serve others, envisioned by the Gospel, grow in our hearts and in our country.
Blessings,
Sister Mary Ann Barnhorn, SNDdeN
“For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.”
