I am a thief. This very moment I am stealing: I am sitting on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon while so many things wait for my attention.
For example, downstairs clean clothes tick in the dryer while wet ones in the washer await their turn. The boys’ bedroom is littered with piles of clothes organized by size and season, signs of the hated task I have momentarily abandoned. Upstairs a growing mound of ironing asks for my time. I have a research project that I could attend to, letters asking to be written, e-mails awaiting response, dirty dishes on the countertop, bills to pay, birthday and Christmas presents I could and should order on-line. But for now my children are happily occupied, and the mid-autumn afternoon sun is coming in. So I sit.
I wonder sometimes at peace, at when it comes and how. Because in addition to the simple tasks I have mentioned above, my mind also is busy. I am thinking often these days of Paul’s words to the Philippians, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” And I am thinking about how true it is, and how again and again I have to bend into my obedience. I have to give away, again and again, those thoughts and things that are not mine. And I have to love my neighbor as myself.
The children and I are memorizing Christ’s sweet distillation of the law: Mark 12: 28-31. I think, in fact, that we have long since memorized it. They have all but stopped reciting it with me, anyway. But I haven’t picked a new one, because, for me lately, there is nothing else. Love the Lord with all that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself.
What does it look like, I wonder, to love my neighbor as myself? Really and truly? Am I even capable? Am I even remotely interested?
The warnings are there: “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” I don’t want to be caught out in that. But I am. Again and again.
Somehow I ended up reading again the story of Stephen’s death from the book of Acts. He had just told an angry mob something they did not want to hear (note to self: avoid this situation), and they, in their rage, stoned him. And his last words, familiar and cutting, “Father, forgive them.”
Jesus said that too, when he died.
But for those who wrong me, my impulse is not mercy. No, indeed. I want justice, sure and swift, and me standing there, justified, triumphant.
And then, when I am wrong, I want mercy. Lots and Lots of it.
See? I don’t love my neighbor as myself. Not Even Remotely.
But what is it? Is it God’s sweet voice working in me to will and to act according to his purpose? Is it He who makes me see my blindness, my selfishness, the plank in my eye? All day I see it, all day I repent, all day I am working out my salvation with fear and trembling.
And then I sit and watch the sunlight fall through the room, spreading itself out over the music on its stand, the deep red wall, the black piano, the pictures in their frames. It comes filtered through the leaves, it shifts with the trees. It is warm, like a hand cupped against the back of my hair. Sweet peace, mercy, forgiveness. All mine. Again. Right Now.
