Daily Lesson for September 6, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 16  verse 20:

“My friends scorn me;

   my eye pours out tears to God . . .”

Human beings have a habit of scorning the sick, the aged, the disabled, and the poor.  Perhaps this is a part of a deeply evolutionary tendency to want to gather with the strong and to shut out the frail. In any case, there is a very clear inclination in us to have contempt for the weak. This is especially the case if we can moralize their weakness, seeking to excuse our own contempt with pseudo-justification. This is what we have done to the poor since the days of the Prophets. 

Today I want to walk towards and not away from weakness. I want to come and be near to the suffering and the aged. I want to reach out towards the poor and not shun them in fear and contempt.

The weakness we seek to reject is actually our own weakness. It is actually our own vulnerability we are afraid of. The poor and weak have many things to teach us about ourselves, many truths to show us about our own weakness and vulnerability.  They have much to teach us about our own fears, our own insecurities, and our own mortality.

These are things we can learn only if we walk towards and not away from suffering.  These are things we can learn only if we come near and not keep distance from the poor, the sick, the lame, and the broken. 

For among these is where God is — and the door for us also.