Rev. Dan Albrant is pastor for Mount Pleasant and Mineral United Methodist churches.
I get little missives in my Facebook feed – spiritual musings and pithy sayings. They come unbidden and usually a few each day. Often, they will bring a smile to my face or a nod to the truth to what they have to share. Sometimes, one will stick in my brain and cause me to ponder it more – opening up something in me that I need to consider at a deeper level. One such posting, in the last week, had this to say, “…Be a good human being. There’s a lot of opportunity in this area, and very little competition!” I invite you to read that last sentence a few times and then sit with it. I wonder what your reaction will be…
As a pastor of two local congregations, I spend a lot of my time interacting with people who are beset by problems caused by other human beings. These can be the everyday problems with communication, relationship issues, controlling behaviors, poor boundaries, etc..., or they can be the kinds of problems that beset us from a systemic or institutional perspective like social injustices, poverty, imbedded racism, marginalization and oppression, lack of mercy and kindness, greed. Thankfully, there are not that many interactions of that latter type – though one is brewing in our community at a local trailer park.
The teachings of all the Abrahamic faiths try their best to lead us to being better people – to being good human beings. Jesus taught that the only two things that we needed to do in our lives was to love God with all we have and all we are and to love each other unconditionally as God loves us. He noted that all of the laws and the prophetic writings in the Bible are summed up on those two commandments. Yet, as the Facebook post notes, while there’s a lot of opportunity to live into those commandments, there’s not a lot of people competing to live in that way. All of us are gifted by God to perform acts of kindness, mercy, forgiveness and grace. When we open ourselves to the transformative power of the sacred writings of our faith, we find that we can make different decisions – decisions that are not based on what is best for me – but what is best for us. All religions, at their best, seek to guide us into living in right relationships and beloved community.
There are a lot of opportunities in Louisa County to put our individual and collective gifts to work to improve the lives of all of us – from the youngest to the oldest. All it takes is the willingness to be a good human being – to look outside your lives and see what isn’t right or good, to speak out when you encounter injustices, to work with local groups who are seeking equity, mercy and a hand up rather than a handout. Community transformations happen one act of kindness at a time, and that ripple effect then spreads to other communities and changes their ways of being.
The blessed assurance is that we have been given everything we need to become good human beings. The questions is, will we be willing to identify the opportunity that best fits our gifts and then get to work to fill that need in our lives and the lives of others? Frederick Buechner said that we are all called to find that place where our deep joy meets the world’s great need. What need can you fulfill today? If you’re wondering how to get started, come to one of our churches this Sunday and we will have some ideas for you.
Arthur and Vera Pullin will be celebrating 70 years of marriage at a family-only anniversary party on January 24. Their lengthy marriage has resulted in two children (Susan Pullin and Jennifer Bott), four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Congratulations on 70 years together, Arth…
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