Why Sunday?
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In dispensing Christian care, we are partners with our loving Messiah, who wants what is best for his people, every day, in every way. Jesus’ guidance for how we should live is intended to make our lives better. Dying for us on the cross showed us how to love. Our lives of loving-kindness makes us helpers in leading the human race to the land ‘flowing with milk and honey.’
The vision of our Care and Kindness movement is to daily participate in Jesus’ prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We are partners in changing the earth so that life moves closer and closer to being “as it is in heaven.” This is Jesus’ agenda. His life is helping the goodness, love, happiness, beauty and perfections of heaven to be realized and experienced in the world He loved so much.
My conversation with a woman studying to be a Spiritual Director puzzled me. I asked her what Spiritual Directors attempt to accomplish with people. She said they help people get closer to God. Interested, I inquired “What is the point of being close to God?” She replied, slightly exasperated, “It is the goal of life.” and added, “There is nothing more important than being close to God.”
I strongly believe that God, maybe even more than wanting us to be close to Him, wants us to be close to each other. He wants us to feel like brothers and sisters in his family, sharing his love horizontally to each other—not just up to Him. I am not against intimacy with God. How could anyone be against that? But intimacy with God must generate in us loving behavior toward others. That is what it is good for. It is to repair and brighten the world through loving kindness, hard work, creativity, forgiveness, encouragement and all the other ways Jesus can flow through our lives. That is what closeness to God must be about. It is not about feeling wonderful—it is about improving our world.
Belief is about behavior, not about intimacy!
We may still be too strongly influenced by the spiritual models and behaviors of nuns, monks, and other reclusive types who have taught that closeness to Jesus is a unique and special feeling. Traditionally, it has often been implied that feeling closeness to God is the goal of life. We have believed intimacy, and the feeling of love, is a closeness achieved in silence, aloneness, and quietness. Then, many suppose, we are where we ought to be as Jesus’ people.
Withdrawal, isolation, silence, mountain top retreats, and prayer vigils are non-touchable Christian programs for getting closer to God. No one dares to criticize or question them, because they are regarded as a sacred tradition. All may be important and good. But we now realize these disciplines are intended to overflow, and spill, and spread in the form of good work and loving-kindness in our daily life. All devotional activity is to facilitate us in making the world a better place. “It is Sunday, but Monday is a’coming.”
A woman presented an analogy to me that I found most interesting. She said, “My husband and I went through some marriage counseling because we did not have a powerful emotional feeling for each other. We had expected to be talking deeply, confronting each other, complaining and blaming, with the guidance of the counselor, as we endeavored to improve our marriage. But we did none of that,” she said. “All we did was agree to do things for and with each other at home. What happened did not so much make us passionate about each other as to, more importantly, lead us to feel connected, and like a team. We feel now like we are working partners.” She then jumped to her beliefs (and behaviors) about Jesus. “I think Jesus and we become partners when we do Jesus-like actions, and Jesus-like loving-kindness, in our daily lives.” She was saying that in the same way she and her husband felt like partners, so it is to be a partner with Jesus in showing love to the people she meets during the week. Her love for her husband was changed by actions. She believed that actions or behaviors were the way to show love for Jesus, and feel closer to Jesus.
She added, “Maybe some people do feel close to the Lord through quiet times and early morning devotions all by themselves, but if it doesn't energize them for service and compassion that touches other's lives, it is missing the point. A busy person supporting, encouraging, feeding, visiting is more likely not only to brighten lives, but to feel a solid kinship with Jesus.”
Changing the pronoun, I John 4:7 says, “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and she who loves is born of God and knows God.” John is telling us that to love is to know God. This says we know God when we act loving. Behavior equals knowing As we move about during the week, sowing seeds of kindness, giving love, caring about those we deal with in the secular world, we are demonstrating that we know God.
The phrase, “Be kind to all you meet, for everyone is carrying a heavy load” says it quite succinctly. Everybody needs to be touched by God, comforted by Him, supported by His Spirit. We, as Followers of Christ, are His arms and His feet. Our behaviors demonstrate our faith. “It is Sunday, but Monday is a’coming.”
