Reflection: Each (holy) other
To have not makes us grateful for what we have.
Imagine if life were one long bustling, rush-hour crowd of people who took no notice of one another. If nothing about each other were noteworthy or surprising or treasured. There’d be no culture, no community, no church/body of Christ. What a sterile, deadly world it would be.
It’s that kind of bereft world the Nobel Peace Prize winning author Elie Wiesel recounts. The death-camp world where at one point the dead were piled on top of the living in dark barracks. Where, in that hopeless silence, Elie heard strains of Beethoven. Hallucination it was not. “It was Juliek, my Polish comrade, playing his violin.…as if his soul had become his bow and his whole being was gliding over the strings.”*
Has some such sacred gift, some holy-other taken your breath away?
Into this broken world snuck Light and Life, and then Spirit-spilt into our lives with gifts and potential to flourish in love. Look around and witness Christ’s dynamic sparks.
Prayer: O Thou who camest from above, the pure celestial fire to impart…confirm my heart’s desire to work and speak and think for thee;…[to] guard the holy fire, and still stir up thy gift in me. Ready for all thy perfect will, my acts of faith and love repeat, till death thy endless mercies seal, and make my sacrifice complete. (Hymn by Charles Wesley)
*Night by Elie Wiesel (By morning, Juliek was dead, as was his trampled violin.)