Thought of the Day !!

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

                                  Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (ESV)

Jesus quoted this when he was asked the most important commandment.  This is the commandment to love God with all that we are.  How we do this is through what Jesus said was the second most important commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves.  For when we share real love with those around us, we are showing love to our Father in Heaven. 

Jesus calls us to love the least, the last and the lost.  We show love to the least whenever we help a person down on his/her luck.  We share love with the least when we participate in ministries that help people get back on their feet, bringing them as sense of self worth.  We are loving God whenever we willfully and cheerfully give the hungry something to eat, give those who are thirsty something to drink, clothe those who have nothing decent to wear, welcome strangers as if they were family, and care for those who are in prisons or hospitals.

Then there’s the last.  Who are these?  I might be stretching this a little, but I would say that the last could be all the saints of the Church.  Think about it, Jesus said that those who are first will be last and those who are last will be first.  As a Christian I should feel that I’m not to be first, but to be last.  So it’s the last who are shown love and support daily as we care for each other’s needs.

Those who need God’s love (and therefore ours) the most are the lost.  Can we bear to know that there will be those we know in this life that won’t be with us for eternity?  Loving God with all our hearts, souls and might means bringing the Good News to those who will not find it otherwise.

So loving God with all of who we are is also loving others as we love ourselves.

In the love of Christ,

greg