Wednesday, March 25

Reflection from Gareth Higgins

The unloved feel unlovable, whereas the loved become love.

Once on a visit to Belfast the inspirational activist for the common good Tony Campolo opened a site where buildings for good work among marginalized people would be constructed. Tony was disappointed that nothing had been done to tidy up the site. That would, of course, come later; but Tony believed that the people whose needs would be served here deserved the transformation of the space to begin now. Tony wouldn’t only seek to ensure that everyone he met had shelter and food, or put himself in harm’s way to oppose war, but he’d pick up trash on the street. He often said that one way to nurture the kin-dom of heaven is to help your mother with the dishes. That’s more radical than it sounds - for one thing, he was encouraging an end to the assumption that only women should do “housework”. He also wanted us to know that everything belongs - from taking care of a fast food wrapper on the street to some bowls in a sink, from simple kindnesses to strangers to how we treat other nations. 

The ache many of us feel for the brokenness of the world is valid. Part of the answer is to love everything - and everyone - we see. 

GK Chesterton once wrote that the only way out of despair for a place is to shower it with love: “For someone to love…it with a transcendental tie… If [someone] loved it, then it would rise…If [people] loved it as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, in a year or two it might be fairer than Florence…[People] did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

This is true for people too.