No, the Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this:
to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble
fellowship with our God. (Micah 6:8)
Recently I had to spend some time at Grady Hospital here in Atlanta. I had to sit with a friend in the trauma unit there. I had to get to the trauma unit through the emergency room entrance. Before anyone can enter the ER at Grady, there is a metal detector that has to be gone through. So I went through it, and then found my way into the waiting area. It was very crowded with people from all nationalities waiting to be seen. The staff there was very professional as well as caring.
To say it was busy is an understatement. It was very hot even with the air conditioning going full blast. So warm that I felt I had some trouble breathing. However, I knew that it was a false signal and ignored it. When it was my turn at the nursing station, I told them the person I was with and that he was taken to ‘Trauma”. The man touched me by his response, not only to those who came to him for help but with me as well. He walked me over to trauma and then left me there. He also apologized for the constant interference from others.
Every night this man deals with great pain and suffering, yet he does not close himself off from those around him. He looked each in the eye and listened with care and did not dismiss anyone at all. He not only treated others justly but with constant love as well. The reason I say he did this over a long period of time is the simple way that he helped each person. He simply accepted them and understood their rude demands and frustration. He did not take it personally but sought to be just with each one. He got out of his own way.
There are many good reasons not help others. Some valid, but some are excuses not to become emotionally involved. People are messy (well I am), they can be bothersome (so am I at times), demanding (guess what? Yep so can I), yet they need help (I need help from time to time).
The unloving response, or the unjust one, can be so entwined with cultures that it can be invisible. Just look at the state of the United States before Civil Rights. Many good God fearing people were blind to the horrors of what many people had to go through during that time….perhaps because it was lawful.
I tend to think the whole abortion issue as a legal right is another example. To give a woman the ‘right’ to terminate a ‘life’ within her womb as accepted and obvious and normal, means that the ‘life’ within the womb has no rights whatsoever. People brag on how they got an abortion on the internet so that they could make more money or push their career forward (though I doubt many agree with those women)….fine….but what about the life destroyed. I am not saying this to change anyone’s mind, that is impossible, and consciences are lulled to sleep over many moral dilemmas, not just abortion. Is abortion the just thing to do, is it the loving action that we are called upon to perform….I think not. Abortion is a cancer I believe, that only shows something deeper and off center in how we look at life today. I am not pointing fingers, the pain and suffering of our lives can lead us to make choices that many regret for the rest of their lives. I have no idea how I would react if faced with this dilemma in my life, yet no matter how I would react, to get an abortion is to take a life, or to stop the process of life that starts at conception and ends in natural death.
There is a woman that I have helped out over the years (with the permission of the Abbot). She can be frustrating, stubborn and manipulative. It is how she survives. Does that mean that I don’t help her? We can’t help everyone, but I do think that most people have people outside of family that they feel called to help over the long haul. They stick, they stay, and we help them. So I try to do the just and loving thing with this woman, who I have come to care for and at the same time to keep a certain boundary with her. In her own way she does try, but because of certain emotional and mental problems, it is difficult for her to be ‘normal’, to respond the same as most people within a certain latitude. She does have others help her as well. Though some of those who help, because they can’t keep proper boundaries, have to back off after awhile, they become too drained to help her anymore.
There are no easy answers to life problems, yet I try not to look at others and just try to do what I can, though it is very little. Yet I do believe we are commanded to do the just and loving thing. I believe this is commanded for our own good, for to turn off our hearts to others will create a great darkness in the heart….a cold unfeeling one, or a very cold and angry one. Not sure which is worse?
It is easy to complain, harder to do the simple just and loving thing. I still struggle with it and will to the day I die. So I pray to the Lord to give me a heart like His, one that is fully human and loving, kind and compassionate. God grace is like the rain that comes down on the parched ground allowing life to flow, it can bring the hardest, coldest, heart, to new life that truly does do the just and loving thing.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
