Life is such a wonderful present
and its end, death, is such an awful prospect.
Everything people do is to sustain life
and to make it longer and better.
Farmers work their fields to grow food that will sustain life.
Carpenters guild house to shelter life.
Doctors heal to protect life and to prolong it.
Teachers show and share the skills needed in life.
All of us contribute to nurture life
by doing whatever it is we do.
Sadly though, there are others who would destroy life
or deny it of others.
Out of spite, out of anger, out of hate.
Yet in the very act of destroying it
they affirm its intrinsic value,
that which they deny of another person.
I choose to be an agent and instrument of life.
I will celebrate it even in the smallest things that I do.
I will respect it in every living creature that shares the earth with me.
I will refuse to be an agent of hate and destruction.
I will choose to be a force for goodness.
I will never agree to be an instrument of evil
We are his people: the sheep of his flock.
Psalm 100
When the Lord saw her,
he was moved with pity for her and said to her,
“Do not weep.”
He stepped forward and touched the coffin;
at this the bearers halted,
and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!”
The dead man sat up and began to speak,
and Jesus gave him to his mother.
Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming,
“A great prophet has arisen in our midst,”
and “God has visited his people.”
Luke 7:13-16