Beams of Love

Monday 1/14/2013 4:10 AM

Today is the first day of the spring semester and mine begins with a class at 7:00 AM.  I turned to the new week of my devotional book and the theme for the week is service.  The opening benediction is especially fitting today.  “Heavenly Father, as the day dawns and calls me to my labors I ask you to enable me to gladly do the work to which you beckon me.  May I do it as a servant of Christ doing the will of God from my heart.”  That is indeed my prayer today and every day.

My assigned reading includes Luke 10, which begins with these words, “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.”  If they were welcomed into a town they had very simple instructions, “Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you.’”  I’m not exactly sure what healing the sick looks like when I am teaching math to college students but many of them need a loving touch after experiencing the pain and injustice that they experience regularly in the course of their daily lives.  I pray that I can provide that loving touch.

My devotional reading today includes a quote from William Blake, “We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”  The context of his quote implies that the beams of God’s love are irradiating us and he suggests that many people try to protect themselves from such.  When I read the quote I did not first think of a beam of energy but a beam that supports some sort of structure.  When I look at the world with the eyes of God’s love I often have experiences similar to one described by Dorothy Day.  “Suddenly I remembered coming home from a meeting in Brooklyn many years ago, sitting in an uncomfortable bus seat facing a few poor people.  One of them, a downcast, ragged man, suddenly epitomized for me the desolation, the hopelessness of the destitute, and I began to weep.  I had been struck by one of those ‘beams of love,’ wounded by it in a most particular way.”  Her description suggests she was irradiated by the love of God.  When I am in those kinds of situations I sense a burden to show the love of God to the desolate and the hopelessly destitute, giving them companionship in their desolation and hope in their hopelessness.  In that way of thinking I am yoked to Christ and I share in bearing the load of his love for the world.

My devotional book suggests a good attitude with which to approach my new semester.  “Ask God to help you this week to see the tasks of your life not as opportunities for advancement or as stepping-stones to some future work.  Rather may you see them as places where you have been called to serve and may you do them gladly.”  I pray that I will be irradiated by the love of God and motivated to bear the load of his love willingly and joyfully.