“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linens and dined sumptuously each day.  And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”  (Luke 16:19-21)

Both died.  Lazarus was taken by angels to Abraham’s side, while the rich man ended up in hell.  In torment, the rich man asked Abraham to let Lazarus come and dip his finger in water to cool the rich man’s tongue.  Abraham reminded the rich man that in life he had received good things and Lazarus only bad things, but now Lazarus was being comforted, and the rich man was in torment.  Furthermore, there was a great chasm, separating them that neither could cross.

It didn’t appear that the rich man had violated any of the Ten Commandments per se, but he violated Jesus’ commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

The rich man’s sin was not that he was rich.  It was his indifference. Even though Lazarus lay at the rich man’s door, the rich man never noticed him each day as he passed by.  The rich man let his wealth and way of life separate him from the people in need of his day.

By historical and worldly standards, even the middle class in America today would likely be considered rich.  We do not want for food, shelter or clothing.  We have employment that enables us to live in a home we have purchased and provide for our families. 

Our circumstances may have the effect of separating us from people like Lazarus.  They still exist, but we don’t see them.  We do not see them in our neighborhoods.  We don’t see them at work or in our churches.  There may be the occasional homeless person begging at an intersection or Metro stop.  But for the most part, unless we take some affirmative action to step outside of our circumstances, our default response tends to separate us from the very poor of our world.

When I read this story I struggle with how much my life is separated from those in need, and the consequences that can result if I do not seek to make up for that separation. 

So, we write checks and give used clothes to various organizations assisting the poor.  I keep some dollars handy in the console of my car for the homeless soliciting at an intersection.   But do these things fulfill Jesus’ message from the above parable?

Do your life’s circumstances separate you from the poor, and if so, what can you do about it?

“I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father, I have made known to you.”  (John 15:15)

What an amazing promise Jesus offers to his disciples and to us.  He has made known to the disciples the wisdom of God.  Through the disciples and their gospels, he offers us this same wisdom and friendship.  If we seek his wisdom and try to live by it, he offers us his friendship. 

Please read A Friendship That Transcends by Yours Truly at www.billdalgetty.com, which shares how this friendship is possible. 

Numerous passages from scripture are illustrated by personal stories encountering God’s presence:

• Praying with an employee planning to have an abortion
• Experiencing God’s voice after a child is born with Down syndrome
• Declining a career advancing promotion for family considerations
• Praying with people who are dying
• Seeking God’s will in business decisions  
• And many more. 

As one of the endorsers said, “This book will inspire you with wisdom, hope and spiritual insights.”

“Everything I Have Is Yours”

These are the words of the father to the eldest son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15:11-32.  In the parable the younger son asks for his inheritance and goes to a distant land where he squanders his inheritance on loose living.  He comes to his senses and decides to return home.  His father welcomes him home and has a feast to celebrate his return.

When the elder son finds out, he is resentful and refuses to join in the welcoming festivities.  He complains to the father that he has always been obedient, but the father has never given him even a young goat to share with his friends.  The father responds that the elder son is always with him and that everything the father has is his.   

The parable is a beautiful illustration of God’s love for both sons.  The loving forgiveness for the younger repentant son is obvious.  The love for the elder son is more subtle.  Some of us may have experienced times in our lives, when like the elder son, we have experienced jealousy or resentment of the attention and forgiveness someone has received whom we deem unworthy.      

We brood, we fume, we get ourselves all worked, but God says to us, “My son, my daughter, you are here with me every day, and I am always with you.  Everything I have is yours – my grace, my love, my forgiveness, my healing, my gifts of the Holy Spirit, my promise of eternal life.  All of these are mine which I share freely with you.  Accept my love and the grace of these gifts.  Accept my invitation to join in the family celebration of reconciliation!

Over the years, I have quietly struggled with being judgmental and seeking recognition. Like the older son, these sins set up barriers in me to experience the fullness of the Father’s love and grace.  Not that the Father withholds his love and grace from me, but that these actions interfere with me being able to fully experience his love and grace.   

Like the older son, do you set up barriers to experience all that the Father has for you? 

In all four Gospel accounts of the Last Supper, Jesus announces that one of the disciples will betray him.  Luke specifically says that Satan entered Judas and then conspired with the chief priests to arrange for Jesus’ arrest.

“Then Satan entered into Judas, the one surnamed Iscariot, who was counted among the twelve, and he went to the chief priests and the temple guards to discuss a plan for handing him over to them.” (Luke 22:3-4)

As one of the disciples, Judas would have traveled with Jesus, listened to his teachings, and seen him perform numerous miracles. What caused him to want to betray Jesus?  Was he a loyal disciple one moment and then suddenly a betrayer?  What caused Satan to enter him?  The Gospel of John suggests that he was a thief and, as keeper of the money, regularly helped himself to it. (John 12:6)

Both Satan and evil are real.  They are spiritual realities just like the Holy Spirit.  While we may not be able to see Satan physically, we can see the effects of his presence, just as we can with the Holy Spirit.  St. Paul describes the contrast.  With Satan and evil, he says we see “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.”  With the Holy Spirit we see “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:19-23)

What makes us vulnerable to Satan’s attack?  Peter says, “Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Pet. 5:8)    Like all predators, Satan attacks our weaknesses, bad habits and self-indulgences, inclining us to serve first ourselves instead of others.  We relate to St. Paul’s statement, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.” (Rom. 7:19)  Satan’s goal is to separate us from God.

The antidote to Satan is accepting Jesus’ offer to dwell in us through the Holy Spirit and embracing his example of death to self – the cross.  This is impossible for us without God’s presence and grace.  But as Jesus says, “With God all things are possible.” (Mt. 19:26)  Many years ago, I met Jesus one evening and asked him to take the present sin and disorder in my life, and he did!  I accepted his offer to dwell in me.  It was truly a life-changing moment.

“Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and he will come near to you.” (James 4:7)  Sin begets more sin.  Grace begets more grace.

What are the ways Satan pulls you away from God?

Following a social engagement with friends, my wife commented that I had been a bit harsh with one person in connection with a certain political discussion.  I protested, claiming to have been quite reasonable in my comments.  It took me a while to acknowledge that what counted was not my perception, but the perception of the person with whom I was having the discussion.  

Later, I was reminded of the words of Jesus to the disciples at the Last Supper when he said, “Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.  Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, ‘Surely it is not I, Lord?’” (Matthew 26:21-22) Each of them protested, yet all of them abandoned Jesus at the time of his arrest; and, of course, we are familiar with Peter later denying three times that he knew Jesus.

Our tendency is to resist acknowledging our sin or wrongdoing.  Even when we acknowledge it, we often make excuses or rationalize our conduct.  We resist correction and then compound our resistance by getting angry with the person who is trying to help us.

This occurs in varying ways.  It can be a job evaluation that indicates we are not doing our best.  Sometimes it shows up in an argument with a family member or friend.  We may dismiss our use of negative humor or participating in gossip.  We may go along with a business practice of questionable integrity so as not to rock the boat.

No matter how long we have been walking with the Lord, we are still capable of betraying Christ’s presence in us, along with his mercy and kindness.  We can deny our wrongdoing, or acknowledge it, seek forgiveness and pray for greater faithfulness.  Proverbs 12:1 may get it right when it says, “He who hates correction is stupid.” (NIV)   

Do I humble myself and acknowledge when I do something wrong, or do I say, “Surely, not I, Lord?”     

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15)

This verse is part of several statements the Apostle Paul makes in encouraging us how to relate to friends and other people in our lives.    

Over the past two months we have had four friends who have died. Two were neighbors, and two were longstanding personal friends of more than forty years. 

One neighbor was in the prime of her life having endured a 10-year battle with cancer.  She was a delightful person, always focusing on others rather than herself.  The other neighbor was in her nineties but suffered from extreme rheumatoid arthritis for many years.  She too was other focused always turning the conversation to how you and your family were doing. 

The other two were long-time personal friends.  One of them had a family with children similar in age to our children.  His wife was a good friend of my wife.  We supported each other in good times and tough times.  The other person I worked with in various ministries at our church over a forty-year period. 

With each death, we experienced their family’s sorrow, but we also rejoiced with them in knowing that their loved ones were with the Lord in heaven in furtherance of Jesus’s many promises.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  (John 3:16) 

We weep with our friends as they weep, we rejoice with them as they rejoice, knowing that their loved ones are with the Lord.

After creating us in his image and likeness, God gave us an assignment – to work and take care of his creation.  “The Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15)

Many people look on work as a curse resulting from the fall, but work was ordained before the fall, so work is a part of God’s divine plan for us.  Our purpose is to take care of creation until God is, as St. Paul says, “all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:28)

Lester DeKoster, in his book, Work, the Meaning of Your Life, defines work as “the form in which we make ourselves useful to others and thus to God.”  He explains, “Culture and civilization don’t just happen.  They are made to happen and keep happening by work.”  He poses the question, what would happen if everyone quit working and answers, “Civilized life quickly melts away.  Food vanishes from the store shelves, gas pumps dry up, streets are no longer patrolled, and fires burn themselves out. Communication and transportation services end and utilities go dead. Those who survive at all are soon huddled around campfires, sleeping in tents and clothed in rags.  The difference between barbarism and culture is, simply, work.  As seeds multiply themselves into harvest, so work flowers into civilization.”  

All work that contributes to the production of goods and services for others is part of God’s plan for creation.  What surprises people is that in working at providing the necessities for others they are serving God himself. 

We may be surprised that in doing our work we, too, are serving God.  In working as an attorney for most of my career, I did not consider early on that my work was serving God, but it was indeed a “thread in the larger fabric of civilization” arising out of God’s creation.  My summer jobs in high school and college of serving on a road asphalt crew and a laborer in a cement plant were also “threads” making up the larger fabric of civilization.  

God calls us to love him and one another. (Luke 10:27) He calls us to be holy as he is holy. (1Peter 1:15) He also calls us to work and take care of our thread in the fabric of civilization arising from his creation. 

Do you realize that you are serving God in your work?

Jim, a Christian friend, mentioned to me a few years ago that he was going to Cuba with a Christian group.  He said that he wasn’t sure what he would be doing but realized that over the years the most important thing he could do was just show up.  He said that he found that God’s grace was at work in any given situation or need. Since then, he and his team have gone on ten of these trips, and their efforts have led to over five thousand professions of faith by individual Cubans. More recently, they have been going to Mongolia with the same kind of results. 

His response reminds me a of the passage in the Bible where the prophet, Isaiah is in the temple and hears the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Isaiah says, “Here I am. Send me!”  (Isaiah 6:8)

Several years ago, I was asked to help start a local chapter of Christians in Commerce, now called WorkLight (WorkLight | Workplace Ministry Helping Christians at Work.  Its mission is “to encourage and equip Christians to be God’s presence in the workplace by the power of the Holy Spirit, exercising faith, integrity and excellence.” I contacted a few close Christian friends, and we invited about 20 men on a weekend retreat. 

The Northern Virginia chapter was established and has been meeting every Wednesday morning since May 1985, albeit by Zoom in recent years.  Over the years, hundreds of men have been invited to experience the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit in a much fuller way, countless lives have been changed through these retreats and weekly meetings, and many workplaces impacted. 

I didn’t do anything special.  Like my friend Jim said, I just showed up.  God was already there through his Holy Spirit, touching and changing lives.

Are you showing up to be God’s presence to the people in your life?

“Shout joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; worship the Lord with cries of gladness; come before him with joyful song.” (Psalm 100:1)

Thirty-five other psalms begin with this same encouragement according to my cursory search.  St. Paul urges us to: “Rejoice in the Lord always. (Phil. 4:4)  Jesus in his Lord’s Prayer begins with “Our Father in heaven, hollowed be your name…”  

A number of years ago, our daughter Emily, who was born with Down syndrome, showed me how we should approach the Father with praise and worship.  We were at mass, and I was serving as a Eucharistic minister and just happened to be serving the isle in which she and my wife were coming down. When she realized that she was coming to me for communion, her face lit up with that big beautiful smile of hers, she held out her cupped hands to receive the body of Christ and started running toward me exclaiming loudly, “Daddy!”  It was an expression of complete and total love. 

My heart melted with her response, but then I thought, isn’t this how God would like all of us to approach him – unreservedly expressing our love and joy for him, not worrying about what others might think. 

While I often begin my prayer time each day with some praise, I am not sure I fulfill the expectation of the psalms or the level of commitment suggested by Jesus in his Greatest Commandment to “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Mt. 22:37) How often does my praise come from duty or a routine approach, instead of a joyful heart?

As the Psalmist says, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.” (Psalm 8:2 NIV)

May we follow their example and sing hymns with enthusiasm, offer our prayers and responses with fervor, and seek the Lord with a pure heart.

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?  We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” (Mt. 2:1-2)

As we know from listening to the story of the Magi every Christmas season, it was the star that led them to the Christ child.  Saint Leo the Great, Pope from 440 – 461, said we should imitate the star of Bethlehem in guiding and leading people to Jesus.  

Just as God took on flesh and blood through the power of the Holy Spirit with the Virgin Mary, so too, he takes on flesh and blood in us through the power of Holy Spirit.  God calls us to be his presence in the world and to bring that presence to the people in our lives – family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. 

Just before Christmas, Jerry Belt, a good friend of 40 years, died at age 94.  I first met Jerry on a Christians in Commerce retreat in 1985.  From then up to the time of his death he had a passion to introduce people to Jesus Christ.  For the past six years, he spear-headed a parish renewal effort at St. Mark in Vienna, VA, to encourage people to experience a personal encounter with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit through the Alpha program.  Alpha is a series of videos coupled with small group discussion and prayers for people to experience a personal encounter with Jesus and the release of the power of the Holy Spirit.  More than 400 people in our parish have experienced Alpha and the deepening of their faith.

With most people as they grow older, their enthusiasm and energy begin to diminish, but not Jerry’s.  Up and until the last few months, his passion to encourage people to experience a personal relationship with Jesus continued unabated.     

Like the star of Bethlehem, Jerry led people to Jesus.  As we move into this new year, let us imitate the star and Jerry, and by our prayer, example and words, lead the people in our lives to experience Jesus more fully.