Considering the Needs of Others
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here! Find a quiet place to center down for a time of reflection and prayer. Place a point of focus on your heart and a point of focus on your belly, and take a few slow, deep breaths. As you do, lift up a prayer of gratitude for the life and love inside of you.
Consider a kaleidoscope - how each turn offers new patterns and combinations of colors. In what ways do our experiences with those around us reshape and recolor our world in similar ways?
“Be the hand of a hopeful stranger
Little scared, but you're strong enough
Be the light in the dark of this danger
'Til the sun comes up”
- Sara Bareilles (“A Safe Place to Land”)
Matthew 22:36-40
‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’
Jesus said to them, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments rest all the law and the prophets.’
Food for Thought
In January of this year, I had the opportunity to go on a virtual mission trip to Lebanon. I’d never been on a mission trip and truthfully never really had a desire to go. But with the nature of our more virtual reality allowing for a flexible, convenient option, I thought, “Why not?”
Our group spent five days together meeting via zoom, learning about Lebanon and its beautiful culture by cooking traditional dishes, writing and singing in Arabic, and getting to know remarkable individuals who dedicate their lives toward the betterment of their communities. This immersion also made us more aware of the difficult experiences of many who live there - about how Lebanon’s history, the governmental infrastructure, the effects of war in surrounding countries, and the coronavirus have led to overwhelming need. We spent five days intentionally considering the life and experiences of others.
Not long after this virtual trip, I was spending time with my grandfather. The trip ended just before Lent began, and I was reconsidering the meaning of this season for my own life. As we sat together, I turned and asked what Lent meant to him. He responded simply, “to me, Lent means sacrificing your own needs to consider the needs of others.”
His comment and my experiences during the trip to Lebanon felt like a spiritual nudge to remember this season of Lent as one that calls us not only to consider what is happening within us, but also to consider what is happening with those around us. The number of verses in the Bible that call us to consider those around us - to welcome the stranger, to love our neighbor, to extend care to one another - stretch on and on. When pressed to sum up the whole of God’s call for creation, Jesus says that at its simplest, we are to love God and love one another. We are to open ourselves up to God and to one another - giving as much consideration to another person’s needs as we do to our own.
We have walked together through these weeks of Lent considering how this season of spiritual practice and reflection calls us to let go of what is keeping us from new experiences, to find moments of stillness within the chaos, to slow down and appreciate the day we are living, to bless the dust of our lives, and to observe the world with an openness for finding the treasures all around.
This week, let us consider together how this season also calls us to engage one another with openness and humility. This week, let this call to love one another open us to see one another more kindly, to listen more earnestly to the experiences of another’s life, and to become more vulnerable to the ways our encounters with one another might shape and change us.
We cannot know how the spirit might call us to respond to these experiences. It could be something as “small" as providing a meal to a person in need or helping your senior neighbor register for a vaccine. It could also be as significant as uprooting your life to provide medical care in a developing country or helping to resettle a refugee family in your neighborhood. What we do know is that extending care to another must first begin with seeing one another fully and completely.
Love one another - it is the simplest, yet greatest command that begins with the spiritual practice of considering the needs of others.
There are many ways to open ourselves to the lives of those around us.
This week consider some ways you can do that in your own life. Reach out to a friend you know has been having a difficult time and listen with attention to their stories and needs. Check in with a senior neighbor who might need assistance getting groceries or scheduling a vaccine. Call a local organization who helps care for the needs of folks in your community and see if you can volunteer.
If you’re interested in exploring opportunities like the virtual mission trip mentioned in the reflection, you can check out International Ministries, or if you want to learn more about the work happening in Lebanon visit our friends at the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development.
Blessing
Dear Lord,
Thank you so much for your example of sacrificial love by which you have called us to live.
Open our eyes to the needs of those around us.
Give us the patience and the courage to be your hands and feet in this world.
A little Table Talk for your table...
If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you like to go? What intrigues you about that destination?
Can you remember a specific time when your experience with another person fundamentally changed the way you understood the world or how you saw yourself in the world?
What might make it difficult to make ourselves open to the life, experiences, and needs of another?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Read a book with your child that celebrates diversity. Here are 50 suggested books. While reading, notice together:
What do you/your children share in common with the characters? Where are there differences? Celebrate both.
Where are there moments of hardship or sadness? How do the characters make it through those moments?
Where are there moments of kindness, love, and hope? Give thanks for those moments.