Healing the World

Our Minister of Music Dennis has inspired me to think about my favorite hymn on love: “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” number 7 in The Baptist Hymnal. It begins, “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory Lord of love,” and ends, “God our Father, Christ our brother, all who live in love are thine. Teach us how to love each other. Lift us to the joy divine.” The words are by Henry van Dyke, a popular Presbyterian preacher, poet, and writer in the last half of the nineteenth century. His meditation on First Corinthians 13 is a powerful little book titled, The Greatest Thing in the World. Learning to love each other is the greatest thing in the world.

One of van Dyke’s most popular stories, The Story of the Other Wise Man (1896), is a parable about loving people. He adds Artaban, to the story of the three Wise Men in the Bible. Artaban sells all he owns to bring three precious jewels to the newly born Christ child. All along his way to meet the baby Jesus, however, people who need his aid delay him, and as a result, he finally uses up all his precious jewels to help people and never gets to see the baby Jesus. In the end, Arbatan has a vision of Jesus Christ telling him that in helping others, he has seen and helped Christ himself.

The scenes of violence in Cairo, Egypt are hard to watch. Our hearts go out to the people who are caught up in the chaos. We pray for the people of Egypt and hope that the violence will stop before more people are killed and injured. How can we make a difference?

As people who follow Christ, we want to be part of healing the world. Jesus’ words apply to us: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the children of God,” and “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” As we learn to respond in compassion to people in their needs and fears, we become peacemakers, salt and light in the world. Since we can’t change the whole world, we concentrate on learning to love. Henri Nouwen wrote, “All people, whatever their color, religion, or sex, belong to humankind and are called to be kind to one another, treating one another as brothers and sisters. There is hardly a day in our lives in which we are not called to this.”