cultivate

Thursday September 23rd, Luke 16: 8 The master praised his dishonest manager for looking out for himself so well. That's how it is! The people of this world look out for themselves better than the people who belong to the light. The dishonest manager, when he found himself in a bit of a pickle, quickly set about setting up a network of friends or at lease allies to support him when he fell. In this network, each was beholding to the other and would be there to look out for and make sure the other made it through the rough times, it was in everyone’s best interest that everyone did OK. This indeed seems like an odd story for Jesus to tell, and yet, the fundamental principal is Christ like solid. When between a rock and a hard place, the dishonest (which can be all of us some of the time and some of us all the time) will shore up these networks of interdependence where each one looks out for the other. In Christianity we are called to recognize our part in the vast family of God, or to use Paul’s vision, the Body of Christ, and recognize others as important elements in our survival in this life. If indeed we would, each and every one, cultivate these relationships for our survival from questionable activities, why are we so reluctant to do so for the positive growth of the family of God? We are all called to cultivate the “we” and that can only be done if we bury a bit of the “me.”