Learning from a Broadway Musical
Today’s message was written by Chaplain Bob Griffiths.
It’s November 16, 1959. The curtain is going up on The Sound of Music – the last of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. It’s the story of the Trapp Family Singers, centering on its matriarch, Maria.
The year before the play’s opening, Oscar Hammerstein drove from his Pennsylvania home to interview Maria in Vermont to gain insights into her character. At one point, he asked her what made her leave the convent where she had been a postulant for two years in a Benedictine Order. And she responded, “What does God want me to do with my life? How does God want me to spend my love?”
What does God want each of us to do with our lives? How does God want us to spend the love so freely given us on the Cross and through God’s boundless gifts?
I suggest that we know the answer: by loving God and those in the world around us; by paying forward to others a tangible expression of that love. So, dear friends, in the time we’ve been given here on earth, help us to love more fiercely, and to open our hearts more widely; to build bridges and to spread hope.
Let us pray these words from one of my favorite hymns:
“Day by day, dear Lord of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.”
And to spread my love more freely. Amen
Daily Message Author: Bob Griffiths
Bob is the former Chaplain at the Pines of Sarasota, southwest Florida’s oldest and largest not-for-profit senior care facility. Prior to joining the staff in 2010, Bob worked in hospice chaplaincy for seven years. He is the past Spiritual Life Director at St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota and is an Associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, an Episcopal Benedictine religious order.
