WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED

When we listen to the news, read the newspapers, even look around our neighborhoods, it is sometimes easy to believe that the world is going to hell in a handcart. Wars and uprisings, poverty and natural disasters, sickness and disease, conflict and controversy are everywhere. A peaceable world, a world where people live in harmony with one another seems so far off if not totally unrealistic and unobtainable.

When the world is perceived as such, most of us look for someone, some hero, some Lone Ranger as it were, to come riding in on a white horse to rectify it all. We know, or believe, that we cannot do it, that we are not that savior, that messiah; but surely someone has to be. The Jewish people in the Old Testament were always looking for that savior, whether in a king, a judge or even the real Messiah, to save them for the messes they were in, messes created mostly by their own sinfulness and selfishness. We are no different today.

What they forgot, what we forget, or perhaps what we all would rather discount and even deny is that we have everything we need to make this world a better world, a peaceable world. The list of what is needed is short: two hands, two feet, two eyes (Helen Keller did it with none!), two ears, a brain, a mouth and a heart full of love for God and one another. That’s all!

That’s easy to say, you say. And, of course, it is. But it is also the truth. It takes a special person, you say. And, of course, it does. It takes a real saint, you say. And, of course, it does. But why were the saints saints? As someone once observed: they were saints because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when it was difficult to be patient, and because they pushed when they wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable, That was all. It was quite simple and always will be.

We are those people, those saints, even if we would never, ever consider ourselves as such, whether in pride or humility. But saints were and are ordinary people: people with two hands and feet and ears and eyes, people who were willing to get involved in the world in which they lived – who get involved in this world. They do not stand idly by and wait for some savoir to do the work needed to be done.

So how do we get involved, we saints of God? Thomas Merton put it rather succinctly: “Before you do a darned thing just BE what you are, a Christian; then no one will have to tell you what to do. You’ll know.” We know Merton was correct. We know in our hearts what to do and what not to do. It is written there by the God who created us and who lives in us and who acts through us. We know.

We have everything we need, individually and collectively, to make this world of ours a better world, a peaceable world, where there is liberty and justice for all, ALL. Not some, not the privileged few, not the powerful: ALL. What we seemingly do not have is the will to do what needs to be done because that will involve personal sacrifice. That is sad.