A Chance at Holiness

Who is our neighbor?  I teach at a technical college and am oh so aware of my need to treat my students as my neighbors.  I have asked the Lord to show me how to love them.  Usually within the first week of the quarter I know which ones are going to need extra loving.  Unfortunately, those are the ones that are the most difficult to love, the most needy, the most irritating, the most demanding.  So how am I going to find a way to love them?

          My attention was drawn a few weeks ago to a quote that I had copied some months ago and then forgotten.  It comes from a book entitled Ragman and Other Cries of Faith by Walter Wangerin Jr., given me by my son.  (By the way, I highly recommend the book.)

          This is the passage that has so grabbed me:

“The power to build up other human beings, or else to tear them down, no matter how menial the circumstance nor how quick the meeting—that is the power possessed by each member of the Body of Christ, and a mighty power, indeed.

          Every time you meet another human being you have the opportunity.  It’s a chance at holiness.  For you will do one of two things then.  Either you will build him up, or you will tear him down.  Either you will acknowledge that he is, or you will make him sorry that he is—sorry, at least, that he is there, in front of you.  You will create, or you will destroy.  And the things you dignify or deny are God’s own property.  They are made, each one of them, in his own image.

          There are no useless, minor meetings.  There are no dead-end jobs.  There are no pointless lives.  Swallow your sorrows; forget your grievances and all the hurt your poor life has sustained.  Turn your face truly to the human before you and let her, for one pure moment, shine.  Think her important, and then she will suspect she is fashioned of God.”

          So this is my personal challenge:  to see every contact, even those of a brief moment, as a chance at holiness.  Every contact with a student or a maintenance man or a fellow teacher is a chance for me to love my neighbor.  Who are the neighbors who will give you a chance at holiness?

                                                                      Faith Lamb