Being a Meeting Ground

The following lyric from Diverse in Culture, Nation, Race by Ruth Duck caught my ear today:

God let us be a meeting ground

where hope and healing love are found

Hope and healing love are found in, with, and through Christ. Therefore, the way for us to facilitate hope and healing is to allow people to encounter Christ in us—to carry that meeting ground with us wherever we go.

In his book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, Edward Hays says this to God: “May I also be one with all who fail to worship you, with all who reject you and your dream because those of us who profess to be Jesus’ disciples have failed to be living examples of your love and justice.”

Jesus was a meeting ground where the outcast, the marginalized, the destitute, and the broken—along with the wealthy, the powerful, and the spiritually blind—could experience God’s love and mercy. To be true to our calling as Jesus’ disciples, we must cultivate that meeting ground within ourselves by remembering that all people are beloved of God as surely as we are and thus deserve our attention, care, and respect, even when they behave badly. What other possible way can transformation occur?

Hope and healing love will not be found unless we have the humility to extend them to others as, to our great joy, Christ has extended them to us.