Connected to the Source
The Second Sunday in Lent
Reflection By Jake Owensby
What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
- Thomas Merton
They didn’t have to take us in. Strictly speaking, it was risky. Mom and I were strangers to them. Nothing more than distant friends of a distant friend. B- and his wife R- were retired. Pushing their mid-seventies.
Our options were slim. We would either sleep under their roof or huddle in our battered car. So the old couple invited us to stay the night.
Their house was small and worn by time and weather. Mom got the spare room. I slept on a cot in the dining room. This was home for about a month.
Our hosts fed us and helped my mother get a job. Eventually, they found us a temporary, rent-free place of our own until we could get back on our feet.
I was eleven years old.
At the time, all I could feel was shame. Being poor and homeless is tough on the soul. It gnawed away at my sense of self-worth and dignity.
I cannot describe the transformative effect of having two strangers welcome me into their home and invite me to call them Aunt and Uncle. But I can tell you what that power is called. It’s called compassion. And I believe that I know where that power comes from.
Jesus once said that you have to be born from above to see the kingdom of heaven. Jesus was saying that we can live a God-connected life. Later in John’s Gospel Jesus promised that, after his resurrection and ascension, he would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. The very presence of God within us can be our primary motiving force and our navigational principle.
God is love. So the Spirit counsels us, guides us toward compassion in all the complex and varied circumstances of our lives. It’s as if Jesus is our mentor in what love looks like in the different situations we find ourselves.
When we share any act of compassion, we might change another person’s life. B- and R- certainly did that for me. But it’s also true that we change the world in ways that we cannot see from our limited perspective.
It all comes down to the source of compassion. Our acts of love arise from God’s infinite love, whether we realize it or not. Your actions may seem small and even insignificant to you. But God is weaving together all our desires and small sacrifices and kindnesses and moments of tenderness. And through them God is mending the world.