We had a devastating tragedy on our block shortly before Christmas, when a family lost their beautiful and beloved teenage daughter quite suddenly in a traffic accident.
Hundreds of kind people sent cards, flowers and other offerings of love. When a sign-up sheet, about delivering meals to the grieving family, was posted online, all the slots quickly filled.
I must confess that in the past, I have left so many things to that nebulous person called “someone else.”
Maybe you know who I mean: Someone else will stop in to express condolences. Someone else will go to the funeral and send meals -- so I don’t have to.
When I pray, I often beseech God to change the hearts of friends who have stopped going to church, or seem to have lost their faith, but with the new year dawning, I’m praying for another conversion of heart -- and it’s my own.
In “The Habit of Being,” Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor wrote that conversion is not something that happens “once and for all and that's that.” Instead, once the process starts, “You are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity ... .”
And I would add that worldly achievements may slow down the movement toward God because, you see, we may start patting ourselves on the back so furiously that we’re unable to clasp our hands in prayer.
Tragedies, on the other hand, often prompt small but powerful changes in our lives.
As I pray for my own conversion of heart, I’ve come to see that Christianity calls us to love each other as we ourselves long to be loved.
And if something as terrible as the loss of a daughter had happened to me, I would yearn for the presence of people to comfort me, rather than leaving it to “someone else.”
For the funeral, Decatur First United Methodist Church was jampacked with family, neighbors and friends, all of whom evidently realized this gesture couldn’t be left to “someone else.”
At the funeral, a friend said this teenager had a gift for making whoever she was with feel like the most important person in the world. To me, this is the soul of true Christianity, since it is in heartfelt, sincere gestures that love is revealed.
And clearly this young lady didn’t believe in leaving love to “someone else.”
I’m a slow learner, I’ll admit, but it’s beginning to dawn on me that our hearts grow ever so gradually larger when we perform small actions that reveal our compassion.
So for the new year, I pray for the grace to resist the temptation of assuring myself other people will help those who are in great pain. I may never undergo a major transformation, but maybe I’ll receive just a tiny ray of light now and again -- and a little touch of grace.
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Lorraine V. Murray's latest books include "The Abbess of Andalusia," a biography of Flannery O'Connor, and two mysteries, "Death in the Choir" and "Death of a Liturgist." Her email address is lorrainevmurray@yahoo.com.
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