Be God’s gift of love

From the Desk of Father David

Dear Friends in Christ,

Last weekend for my homily I read a modern day parable called Old Turtle written by Douglas Wood. The story taught many lessons, but I would like to focus on one. In the story there arose a great argument about God. Today there are many arguments about different topics. These arguments are dividing people into groups. The Old Turtle in the story is like Jesus because he tries to teach the real nature of God and bring unity. The parable asks us to remember that we are called to be God’s gift of love to the world and a prayer from the world back to God.

We look to Jesus to see how to be God’s gift of love. We see Jesus spending time listening and explaining His point of view. When accepted, He helped them grow deeper in their understanding of God and life. When rejected, Jesus remains patient with them and offers them other opportunities to accept His message. We never see Jesus arguing. We see in Jesus’ words, actions, passion, and resurrection a dedication to live as a gift of love to the world.

I believe if we stopped and remembered that we, like Jesus, are called to be a gift of love to the world it would change the way we deal with each other. First and foremost we would stop the arguments and replace them with true and honest dialogues. These dialogues would help us hear what we have in common and the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding us through the conflict. This type of listening challenges us to try to understand where the other person is coming from and be less preoccupied with what we are going to say to show we are right. Many times we want the same goal, we only disagree with how to get there, so let us pray and work together in building a better world.

Come Holy Spirit and set our hearts on fire with Divine love.

In Christ,

Fr. David