30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ex 22;20-26
1 Ths 1:5-10
Mt 22:34-40
“You must love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
Today’s scripture is familiar to everyone, even those who are not Christian. This verse is one of the most quoted (if not the most), yet sadly one that is rarely lived out. It’s just too difficult; we can’t seem to grasp how to love God, love our ALL GOOD FATHER, with all our heart, soul and mind, how can we possibly love – be expected to love – a sinful neighbor?
Yet, aren’t we that ‘sinful neighbor’?
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere.
Why did you spill the coffee?
“Because someone bumped into me!!!”
Wrong answer.
You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup.
Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea.
*Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.*
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It’s easy to fake it, until you get rattled.
*So we have to ask ourselves… “what’s in my cup?”*
When life gets tough, what spills over?
Joy, gratefulness, peace and humility?
Anger, bitterness, harsh words and reactions?
God provides the cup, YOU choose how to fill it.
It is quite simple, isn’t it?
So where should our focus be? If I choose to be filled with God in heart, soul and mind, won’t that be the beginning of loving my neighbour? If I choose to work on my heart, instead of judging you and yours, it only stands to reason that I would become a neighbour more able to love my own neighbour.
When I intentionally begin my days heart-focused on God, His mercy falls all over me and, in turn, love spills out of me. When I am heart-focused, mind-focused, on God and being who He created me to be, I allow Him to fill my cup. When my days begin with my to-do list, the world is so vivid in my eyes and loud in my ears that I sometimes press on through my day and forget God entirely. And my cup is instantly filled with this world and throughout the day when I am ‘bumped’, the world, not love, spills out.
We simply are incapable of fully loving our neighbour if we don’t LOVE GOD with all our heart, mind and soul.
(Today’s Oxygen by Gina Ulicny)
Prayer: Father God, we beg you to help us close our eyes and ears to this world so that we see and hear only You.
Thanksgiving: Thank you Lord, for all those you put in our path to show us how to live with a heart and mind focussed on only You.
OXYGEN 
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