Life is so simple really. We, ourselves, complicate it.
It can be joyous and beautiful, and at other times tough and painful, but deep down when you look at it, life is simple. It is about love. Choosing to love, and letting yourself be loved. So many things have been done because of love. Sometimes it’s to protect those we love – our families and friends. Other times we do things to others because of a lack of love.
People have done great things out of love, helping so many people. But yet wars have also been fought. Families have been destroyed. A teen sits alone in despair, years of being picked on or alienated because he or she is different, they don’t look a certain way, or act a certain way. They are contemplating taking their own life, or perhaps the lives of those around them, just to get back at them, at society. All because they are yearning for love.
It’s simply really. It doesn’t take a PhD to see this. We want love. We want time with those we love, and in today world we often have neither.
Underneath all the distractions, life is simple. Our faith is simple. It’s about love. We’re the ones who complicate it.
In our imperfectness, we twist love in so many different ways so that it becomes a mangled mess, a shell of its former self. I love to observe things, and I love to observe people. I see this every day, out and about, the love that is there around, and in particular those that are yearning for love. Those lonely souls who are calling out for help. Too often we get caught up in the complexity that we create.
I see the simplicity, but I too often don’t take the simple actions. A simple smile and a ‘Hello’. You look at the fallout from the school shooting in Florida a month ago, and just the other day students in schools around the nation conducted walkouts in protest. But many students, urged by parents of some of the fallen in Florida chose to do a ‘walk-up’… Not walking out of class, but instead walking up to those lonely souls, sitting with them at lunch, perhaps thanking someone, getting to know others who differ from them. I don’t know how many students actually chose to do this, but I like the thought of it. Simple acts of kindness, simple acts of love towards each other.
This is what our Father in Heaven did to us. He walked-up… He walked-up to us through His Son. You can analyze the readings to your hearts content today, there is so much packed into them. You can stew and stew about a particular verse, trying to understand, and that is totally fine. It is important to think and to seek meaning, especially with how sacred Scripture is written with all God has filled it with.
But when I look at the readings and reflect, I seek out the simplicity, simple things. God comes to us in simple ways. And so with today’s readings, God saw that His initial Covenant was not working. He knew that we needed Him in our hearts, written into our very heart and soul if we were ever to be saved. He had to become a part of us – literally. He loves us so much, and what is the greatest form of love? Sacrifice. He had to become flesh and He chose to walk-up to us, to reach out to us as a Man, in the flesh, one of us.
And Jesus had emotions and feelings like us. He had to suffer like us, and for us, and learn obedience from that. He came to be with the lonely souls, and through His sacrifice, through His Eucharist, He comes to our lonely souls every day. When we walk-up to Him, He’s in turn walking-up to us. Through this sacrifice 2000 years ago and the same sacrifice that happens in every Mass, every time we receive Him in Communion, God’s new Covenant is written into our hearts, into our very soul, just as He told Jeremiah all those millennia ago.
But what about all the suffering and the pain and unfairness we encounter? It hurts, it really does. I see the things we have to deal with today, the things our youth must deal with. I see how we treat each other, and how we treat our children. I see the people, the kids yearning for help only to spiral down the pit of despair, thinking there is no way out. I see the rage that people feel and exude towards one other. I see the pain in people’s eyes.
I don’t have an answer for as to why any of it happens. The only thing I can tell you, the only thing I can do in these times is to let the it bring me closer to God, and to let it teach me obedience to Christ, just as “Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered…”
Walk-up to Christ, don’t walk-out on Him, embrace His simplicity and let His love be written in your heart. We don’t have to overthink it. It doesn’t get any simpler than that really. Perhaps then, by Jesus leading us closer to Him, through our pain, we will someday have peace, and understand.
