Help me serve not my own but your interests, O God ...

 
Isaiah 58:1-9
                                          
What fills up my thoughts, words and actions – my own agenda or God’s interests?  My own interests include saving face, saving my own skin, and saving money at all costs, not to mention my plans, possessions and complaints. God’s interests are quite different.  Isaiah lists a few: loosening the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of immoral servitude, letting the oppressed go free, sharing (breaking) bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor home, covering those who are stripped of clothing and dignity, and getting along with ‘family’, both extended and nuclear. This Lent will I be consumed with my own, puny and pecuniary, interests or will I be aligned and actively involved in heart, mind, soul and strength with the interests of God? Help me serve not my own but your interests, O God.
                                                                              
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.   (Deuteronomy 3:19)
Love is a one-way street.  It always moves away from self in the direction of the other.  Love is the ultimate gift of our selves to others.  When we stop giving we stop loving, when we stop loving we stop growing, and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfillment; we will never open out to receive the life of God.  It is through love we encounter God.
 St. Teresa of Calcutta  (Where there is Love, there is God, p. 26)
 
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei