When I was a nurse in Pediatric Intensive Care, often people would say to me, "I could never work with sick or dying children."  Even nurses told me this. They were much too sensitive.  It would hurt them and depress them and demoralize them too much to do so.

 

I could do it, not because I was overly caring and sensitive, but because I was strong.

 

What made me think about that today was something my husband said recently.  He is the most kind and sensitive man I know, and yet he observed that if we really see the other-in-need-as-us, it would be too heartbreaking.  And so I said to him, "So you are saying that when Jesus says to love our neighbor as ourselves he is asking the impossible."

 

Yes, maybe, and that calls us to two things.  It calls us to know that we cannot do it ourselves.  The hurt and the need and the tragedy of this world is overwhelming and would crush us.  But it also calls us to know that with God's power and strength and courage we can do anything and are called to do anything.

 

So maybe we overdo the "sensitizing to the needs" stuff when we talk stewardship.  It just overwhelms us of the need.  Maybe we need to be reminded again of the love that moves us and the power that backs us.

 

When we paint Jesus as the Good Shepherd too often he looks all-loving and -compassionate, but not really tough enough to care for the sheep.  The Jesus I know is strong enough to act in the face of incredible need and love in the face of incredible indifference -- and even hate.  The Jesus I know is strong in the faith that God is with us in it all.

 

Even the saints of today display a lot of that quality.  Mother Theresa is portrayed as loving and compassionate, and certainly she was, but to work under the conditions she did and care for the dirty, filthy, cast-off people.  She had to be incredibly strong and brave.  To leave a well-to-do household to live on nothing but what God provided, she had to know that Jesus that I know.

 

And she had to have a strength of vision for what could be.  She had to see the homeless as Jesus sees them.

 

So my call this week is not to be more sensitive, it is to be more strong.  Not in our own strength, but in the Lord's.

 

For our church, for our world, for the kingdom, we are the people of God after all!

 

Lord, When I am weak lend me your strength.  When I am overwhelmed with all there is to do, overwhelm me with your love and power, and when I see only what is, help me to see what you can do through me.  Amen