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Good Morning – Today in the Caribbean island of Dominica, it is a national holiday, ‘Community Service Day’ …..  the Caribbean may seem a long way from the creeping cold of winter in Britain but it warms the heart to think that on this day, the population of around 70 thousand people are focusing on serving the rest of the community.  In the US they have a similar day but call it ‘Make a difference day’ and people are awarded for the most creative or transformative ways in which they can make a difference in their community .  Last year a 16 year old boy started a charity that matched the right size of shoes with young homeless people – and he won recognition on Make a difference Day.
To wait and pray or to act now and change the world.  This is a fundamental tension for all religions – our desire for the sacred and the eternal, our longing for heaven and our duty to make heaven on earth.  We need to live in that tension – there are dangers at either extreme – an empty activism or a resigned passivism……  as St Ignatius of Loyola is once reputed to have said – Act as if everything depended on you; Pray as if everything depended on God.   But deep down – the desire to serve seems to be a well trodden path to happiness or even to receiving the gift of joy.  So this morning as I gear up for another day – let that desire to serve grow in my heart – to change the world around me for the better, even in the smallest ways, and take away the temptation to grasp, to blame, to act in ways that makes me blind to others’ need. Amen.