Today I think back to my earliest years. Communications and travel were very different than they are today. Then the community was the neighborhood; today the neighborhood is the world. What was so far away now is "just up the road."
Today we are often called to serve more than the aging relative or the sick neighbor. Today our outreach is called for those whose language and culture we might not understand. With the click of a computer mouse we can watch on our computers the terrible natural disasters and even the destruction of war in places far away in travel time but now technically seconds "just up the road."
While we may feel the same "burden" that Martha grouses about, St. John’s letter reminds us that we have a calling to love one another. This is a genuine debt that we carry because we ourselves have been the object of another’s love or care or forgiveness. Our Creator God loved each of us. He fed our ancestors in the desert, on grassy plains, by a well and so on. But more than that our God gave us his Son to be our nourishment, to guide us when we have been lost and to give us when we are in need ... because we, too, have asked for his help. And he answered us.
Martha gave herself to others. Ours today is also a vocation quite similar because we too are the object of God’s love. Service to others is, perhaps, the reality of a rainbow: your service is the pot of gold for others!
Photo: From collection of Josiah Newton Covert
