Parson to Person - Taking care of you

The other night my wife and I were watching the movie, ?The Wizard of Oz? and what Judy Garland?s character, of Dorothy said struck me as worthy of further reflection. ?Someplace where there isn?t any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be! It?s not a place you can get to by a boat or train. It?s far, far away - behind the moon - beyond the rain...?

While Dorothy goes on to sing about such a place being ?Over the Rainbow?, it occurred to me that it maybe sounded a lot like the Kingdom of God. And a friend who recently passed had spent his life working to bring the Kingdom of God here on Earth. These two things got me thinking: Isn?t that what we are all supposed to do in some way or another?

Matthew wrote in his Gospel Chapter 22:

?When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them tested him by asking, ?Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?? He said to him; ? You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.??

So when Jesus said you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind what was he really saying? An early church father said that ?the glory of God is man fully alive.? Well, in order to be fully alive, don?t we have to love ourselves as God loves us?

Therefore, it would seem, our capacity to love, begins with loving ourself. This doesn?t mean a selfish, type of love, but does mean taking care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. It means being able to take a hard honest look at yourself, and coming to a solid acceptance of yourself, good points and bad points.

All love means taking chances and love of self is no exception. About 12 years ago, I experienced a real encounter with what it means to truly love yourself. Three days before we were supposed to go to court to start the adoption process for our foster son, his grandmother, who had said for 18 months she wouldn?t take him, said she wanted him.

By law, there was nothing the state could do, they had to give him to her. Quite frankly, I had a nervous breakdown. My wife reminded me that God was there to help me and I started praying and going to church more often. I finally understood how God loved me, and therefore, how I could love myself. I mattered to God, therefore I had to matter to me. And since I mattered to me, God mattered to me as well, and so did his people, I mean it all just seemed to fit together.

So how can we love our neighbor as ourself? A lot of ways. They don?t have to be big things. Shoveling the neighbor?s walk, paying for the person in line behind you at the coffee shop, or slowing down to let someone merge into traffic. Little things go a long way toward showing the love of God.

I think that love is our mission. I believe God seeks to heal a broken universe by asking us to be his witnesses and helpers in that work. To live this way requires humility. It requires us to conform our hearts to God and attempt to see the world as he might.

If the challenge is to love God, ourselves and others. We can do this through our actions, like St. Francis of Assisi said; ?Preach the Gospel always, use words when necessary?. Or as one of my wife?s favorite bumper stickers says, ?Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty?.

And couldn?t that bring us all a little closer to realizing God?s kingdom here on earth?