Love is Messy

Best speech/sermon I heard this year was given at the Family Life Services Banquet.
http://www.women-helping-women.net/index.html

John Ensor http://johnensor.org/ spoke about the fact that love is messy.

He elaborated that when we take on one commitment out of love for another, then what proceeds from that is further commitment. Specifically when we encourage women to carry their babies to term then we have a continued responsibility for that woman and her baby. Or when we take in someone who doesn't have friends or family, we incur an additional responsibility and we also have to deal with aspects of their personality or life that we perhaps would rather not.

He also said that every generation is called to respond to a crisis on the nature of humanity in a very practical way. Whether it be the Holocaust or slavery or now abortion. We cannot generally respond by stopping the crisis in toto but one person at a time. The underground railroad saved people one at a time. He related a story of a person who was helping to hide a Jewish family during the Holocaust who responded with love when one of those hidden took ill. He contracted the illness himself, on purpose and then when medicine was prescribed for himself, he shared it with the hidden one.

I often become reluctant to help someone because I can see all the additional needs they have and am now more sensitive to the fact that this is a rule of love. It is messy.

So, as we begin this new year, everyone lets get messy!!