STRANGER BOX RECYCLED

STRANGER BOX RECYCLED (Originally posted 10/23/18)

Moses declared: “For the Lord your God is mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality…He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore love the stranger…” Our human tendency is to classify people into “us” and “them”; the more different they are, the greater our impulse to dehumanize them, casting them aside with egocentric, self-justification. We just drop them in the “Stranger Box.” This leads to ungodly hatred. The ironic thing is, every single one of us is in someone else’s stranger box. The child of God must behave as our Father in Heaven, loving without discrimination. He can judge righteously, for He loves righteously. LORD God, Your ways are wonderful. You love perfectly. You judge justly yet with mercy. Open my eyes and heart to Your ways and use me as an instrument of Your love. 

How heartbreaking to return to America from Israel today only to discover that 6 people were killed in an attack on Jews in Jersey City. A Jewish Market was targeted. Antisemitism is a deadly disease and must be eradicated from the heart of mankind. Today my Coffee On The Dock takes a little different direction:

LORD, have mercy on this nation. Deliver us from hatred of any sort. Begin with me.

I offer this prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.