Good morning dear readers! Two topics this morning, but both wrapped up under the name of working with love…. We have a great big hallway closet that could be a baby bedroom or a third bathroom. Instead it is filled to the brim with stuff that I literally stuffed into it when we moved to Lake Placid… Everyone has a closet, room or at least a drawer full of stuff that you would like to dump into the trash…. It’s been there so long that you aren’t sure who or what might also be living in there under it all… OH! But we have to go through it because there are photos that we used to have on our walls (when we had more wall space), and things we bought as gifts, 5 or more years ago. That stuff is meticulously being taken out of the closet as we speak by my dear Chuck, and he is stacking it in the dining room. In the old days, this activity would have had a short shelf life as we entertained on that table, a lot. But now, I can walk by the pile and avert my eyes. Pretend it isn’t there…. Ah! Pretending it isn’t there is as easy as pretending what is happening at our southern border isn’t affecting me.
In the old days when the Jewish people were sitting in Babylon, they only had memory. They used to tell stories of God who has compassion and loves us. One of the stories is the Book of Daniel. This is a great story. As children I am sure we read about Daniel helping the lion who later on didn’t eat Daniel. We read about Daniel’s 3 friends with those wildly different names Shadrach, Meshac, and Abednego; names we loved to repeat! They were put into a burning furnace because they wouldn’t bow to false gods. They persisted in their faith in the One God of Israel. Please read Daniel! In the story of Susanna (chapter 13) who was falsely accused of committing adultery by 2 lusty old bad guys, Daniel saved Susanna with cogent argument. He was willing to stand up before Jews who were willing to condemn Susanna because "elders" accused her. Daniel stood up because he was filled by the Holy Spirit with courage and strength. Much later on in time, Jesus will stand up also and have enough compassion for a condemned woman to face the crowd who already have stones in their hands. "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." (John 8:1). The people wanted to condemn Jesus for breaking the Law. An adulteress must be stoned. But compassion rules. The men guiltily shrink back and slink home. The message in this is when we love, when we have compassion, we are stronger. Someone commented about the crisis at the border that Congresspeople come to the border and see the crowds and feel sorry, but then go back to Washington and continue to fight and call names. Divided by politics, we fight bitterly and the condemned languish on concrete floors at the border. What are we afraid of? Attack the problem with love!!! Work together in Love as God wants us to do. Do we not believe in God? If we don’t then we are finished. Is it love when we criticize and call names? Is it love when we hate each other in the name of politics? Is it love when we refuse to work on the problem that drove the people lying on the concrete ground at our border from their homes in the south? Let us work together in love. Dredge that love up from the bottoms of our hearts to solve problems. Let us read the "stories" in Daniel and let us grasp the incredible faith the men in the oven had in a very strong God. Grasp God’s offered hand and get up. Get to work in Love. God bless us! Angels with us.