Yesterday, I sat down to read the appointed lessons for Proper 7B to see what would speak to me for this meditation. “Open wide your hearts” from the epistle grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go. I sat with that for awhile and got no further than the title. This morning in my quiet time, I opened “Forward Day by Day” to today’s date, June 13^(th). As I read the reflection written by the Rev. Marshall A. Jolly, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Morganton, North Carolina, I realized that he was speaking about why we need to open our hearts. The synchronicity was too much for me not to quote:

“Jesus’ command to love our neighbors is so familiar that we say it almost unthinkingly. And yet, as familiar as it is, we constantly struggle to live it out. Sometimes we are guilty of ignoring the commandment entirely. But most of the time, we’re guilty of trying to edit it. We say, ‘Love everyone … except these people’ or ‘love only the neighbors who deserve it’ or ‘love the neighbor whose life I understand.’

Jesus commands us to love—nothing more and nothing less. May we take him at his word.”

We can’t begin to do that unless we open wide our hearts, hearts filled with compassion, generosity, and the desire for reconciliation, hearts detached from bias, prejudice, certainty, and self-centeredness. To show us the way, we have been given the self-giving model of Christ Jesus who opened wide his heart and who “stretched out [his] arms of love on the hard wood of the cross” (BCP, p.101). It may not be easy, but it is the path to which we are called.