A Lutheran minister, named Roy Lloyd, once interviewed Mother Teresa. He said that one of his questions and one her answers stands out in his mind as “a bright sun burning in my mind.”
He asked Mother Teresa, “What’s the biggest problem in the world today?” Mother Teresa answered, without hesitation, “The biggest problem in the world today is that we draw the circle of our family too small. We need to draw it larger every day.”
With all that is evil and wrong in this world today it would be easy to answer that question with a hundred different events. That’s what makes Mother Teresa’s response so jilting.
She is saying that the problem is not so much with the world as it is. We need to see more people as our neighbor than we are currently doing.
I see Jesus doing this in his baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. He identified with all of humanity and with our need to be cleansed of our hatred and prejudice of others. When you and I were baptized, we were drawn into Jesus’ baptism and into the circle of God’s family, the family circle Mother Teresa was talking about.
Thanks to Brett Blair for his thoughts
Do we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that our own attitudes about the problems we see daily on television are formed because the circle of our family is too small?
Reflect. Consider. Pray.
