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The Shema!

             Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

            The Shema! How can I pass up writing about this when it’s suggested as the verse of the day? I spent years trying to figure out (along with lots of other people) a “personal mission statement,” only to discover that God had already told us. I’d even heard these verses or their references in the New Testament. One day, it just clicked – intellectually. This is our mission – every single person’s mission. Loving our neighbors as ourselves is a consequence of it.

          The question should not be “What’s my mission?” But it often is because we “will make [ourselves] like the Most High,” (ref. Isaiah 14:14.) Life gets in the way of asking what this means, let alone living it out. I suspect we don’t realize how often we fail to love those we see daily, let alone a being who cannot be seen and doesn’t invade our consciousness like a needy dog. In fact, I think sometimes we are more attentive to and compassionate toward the needy dog than we are toward a God we need.

          The question should be “How will I fulfill my mission to love God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength?” Two places to begin are with loving our neighbors as ourselves and by obedience to what God has commanded. I say “begin” because we can love our neighbors and even do what God commanded without loving God. But loving God includes loving our neighbors and obeying what He commanded.

          Another, more difficult task is letting God be God. This ties in with yesterday’s post. Can we love God if we then tell Him that He’s not welcome to care for us? If we aren’t willing to “burden” Him? There’s a difference here between dealing with our guilt and dealing with our shame. God has already addressed our guilt. What we tend to want Him to not touch is our shame.

          A final difficulty that we face is unrealistic expectations. What does it mean to love God with all our hearts, souls, and strengths? Think of the Grinch. In the course of the story, his heart grows three sizes. What he could do at the beginning and the end are different. Think of your muscles. If you start lifting weights (consistently and over time) don’t they get stronger? In Young Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock gets disgusted because he can’t play the violin. When Watson asks how long he’s been learning, it turns out he’d just started that day.

          Dare I say it? Do what you can, where you are, with what you have, now. Tomorrow, you may love better, or worse, but repeat the effort. 

 

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