And finally another man came and helped the injured man on the ground. He is known as the Good Samaritan. Jesus says in substance that this is a great man. He was great because he could project the ‘I’ into the ‘thou.’ He was great because he could surround the length of life with the breadth of life . . . . May it not be that the problem in the world today is that individuals as well as nations have been overly concerned with the length of their individual lives and concerns, devoid of the breadth? But there is still something to remind us that we are interdependent, that we are all somehow caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Therefore whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a million dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than thirty years, I can never be totally healthy. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.[1]
[1] Martin Luther King Jr. The
Measure of a Man (Fortress Press: Mn, 2001), 44-46.
A prayer for Thanksgiving...Let
us this day give thanks…
Father
God, in Your Son and through the Holy Spirit, You have given us the reason and
the reality of thanks. Thank You for giving us the truth of giving. May we this
day, as Your beloved, teach the world what it means to give thanks. What began
centuries ago as a joyful expression of dependence on you still echoes among us
today.
Thank
you, Lord, for sharing Yourself with us. You capture us in the communion of
your eternal mutual love through our union with Jesus by the Spirit. You came
to us so that in Your love we might become one with You so as to press on
towards becoming one with each other.
Thank
you, Lord, for your honesty. In the Scriptures you always tell us the truth.
You don’t pull any punches in stirring, confronting, and comforting. Our faith
in You grows as we discover more and more of Your reality in place of our
fallen truths. We embrace You because You first embraced us.
Thank
you, Lord for Your love that binds everything together. We give You praise for
the harmony You have showered down upon Your bride. May we daily step into the
Spirit so that the peace of Your son might overwhelm our obtuse and stubborn
hearts. You know how to push us and stretch us so as to draw us out of self and
sin and into Savior and sacrificial love.
Thank
you Lord God Yahweh Elohim for the richness of Your teaching, the purity of
Your hope and the insanity of Your love. Gather us in Your loving embrace so
that through the amazing grip of Your love we might become the thanksgiving of
Your Christmas joy.
And
finally, Father Almighty, in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, thank You for
pouring out Your eternal love into our hearts. Fill us with Your Spirit so that
we might forever become the crazy eruption of Your radical and audacious love. You
are gracious beyond words: thank you for loving me!
Amen
Jesus!
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