The One Gift We Can all Offer

Several years ago, back when I was doing some continuing education up in Atlanta, I ran into an old friend who had been the chaplain at Columbia when I was in seminary. She was there in the hospital the day my daughter Marley was born, and it was so good to see her.

When I ran into her she was retired, and I asked her what she was doing these days. And she said, “You know Joe. I’m 72 years old. I don’t have any mountains to climb. I’m thinking a lot less these days about doing, and I’m focusing a lot more on being. I want to be centered. I want to be grounded. I want to be generous and kind. I want to be at peace in my soul. I want to be present to my children and grandchildren. I’m working on being.”

How do you do that?

“Well, I sit in Jesus’ presence and let him work on me.”

It reminded me of something John O’Donohue said quoting the 14th-century Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, “So many people come to me asking how I should pray, how I should think, what I should do; and the whole time, they neglect the most important question, which is, how should I be?

O’Donohue later went on to reflect on Eckhard’s teachings: “There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor no created thing can touch. There is a place within you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer… is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.”

We are at a time when there is an immense need in our nation, in our neighborhoods, our communities, and in our families. And sometimes it feels overwhelming. What do we do?

But I’m more and more aware that the one gift we all can offer if we are willing to go deeper, is the gift of our inner peace and well-being, the groundedness which is the well-spring of the compassion, generosity, and grace which the world so desperately needs. Your peace and well-being are a gift – not only to you – but to the world.

May we turn to Jesus. And let Him work on us.

Let us pray: We pause even for a moment in your presence right now, O God, asking for your healing, life-giving Spirit to fill us and renew us. Help us carve out time and space to meet with you so that we might be people of compassion and centers of peace. Amen.