Opening our hearts to others this Lent
WRITING in the Church of England’s “Live Lent; embracing justice” Isabelle Hamley, a former chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury writes, “Laws on their own do not deliver a just society, they merely make it possible.
“It is the attitudes underlying the laws that matter; caring for the poor, the disadvantaged, and the stranger, not primarily out of duty, but because they are people made in the image of God, loved by God.
“The laws of Scripture keep reinforcing that to do justice, to love our neighbour, goes beyond duty, it is a response to God’s love.”
Do you know how much God loves you? As we approach Good Friday, and then after that Easter
Day, do you know how much God loves you, and that He so loved the world (and you within it) that He gave His only Son. And for why?
That if you, me, anyone puts our trust in Him, it’ll make all the difference in the world and even more difference in the hereafter. He loves you!
So how will you react and respond to that love? Love Him back for sure. That’s the first and greatest commandment. Check it out.
But then what about the second commandment on top? Everybody thinks that loving our neighbour is a doddle, a breeze, and that we (mostly) are jolly good at it. But is that fact or fiction? In the middle of the last Thursday/Friday night our son, and his wife, who was born in Ukraine, and who are both former students of JCC, were due to arrive at our home with six members of ‘our Ukrainian family’, who’d spent days driving through Ukraine to safer regions, and hours crossing the border into
Poland, and then nearly a fortnight in Poland awaiting a UK visa (and at time of writing are still ‘stuck’ there waiting for red tape to give way to a green light).
Gran, two aunties who’ve left their menfolk behind in Ukraine, and three children, our daughter in law’s cousins.
We’ve been expecting them and will be relieved, indeed ecstatic, to see them.
The painfulness of their journey and of the reason for it is etched upon their faces.
Send me a message on Facebook and I’ll tell you all about it, by giving you access to my Facebook page.
We will now set, with the help of many, to integrate them into our lives and into the Hinckley Community.
And will you respond to the love of God this Lent by opening your heart to Him, and to ‘us and ours’, and to all those needing welcoming hearts and arms during the coming weeks?
As God looks into your soul, and into the actions which go with that, what does He see?
As God looks into your soul, and into the actions which go with that, what does He see?