Today is Giving Tuesday, a day that follows, the “cyber Monday” when millions gorged themselves on spending and making some of our corporations even wealthier than they were before. Established in 2012 as a project by the 92nd Street Y in New York, the idea was to serve as an antidote to the frenzy of shopping following Thanksgiving.
Today just about every organization is pitching for their issue, including refugees, the environment, animal shelters and sanctuaries, and food banks. Each one has built a shared community of concern hoping we will support their particular issue with a gift.
At the same time, the commercialism that surrounds Christmas continues to make its pitch. In his sermon on the Arbella as the ship got underway to sail to New England, John Winthrop called for us to care for each other. We can choose where to put our resources. How we do that is a mark of us as part of a greater community.
Prayer for the Day
Open our eyes, O God, so we may truly see you,
In the world about us, even where we least expect;
Open our ears, O God, so we may truly hear you,
Through your Word, even when we do not recognize it.
Open our minds, O God, that we may truly understand you,
As we search for knowledge and wisdom.
Open our hearts, O God, that we may truly love you,
And live in the world as you would have us live.
In the name of the One who opens us to all possibilities
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities; we must uphold a familiar commerce together …in all meekness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” 1630 (1588-1649)
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
Dorothy Day, social activist, from The Long Loneliness (1897-1980)
How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
1 John 3: 17