Jesus suggests in Matthew that there might be times in our lives when we encounter a person who is hungry or thirsty or a stranger. Or maybe there is a person who needs clothes or needs a visit. And what we don’t necessarily realize at the time is that that person is Jesus. And so to try to alleviate this restlessness that I was feeling in my own life, I started looking for strangers.

Ending the debt between parent and child ended the relationship.  As if indebtedness was what held the relationship together.  As if the kinds of debts we can never repay are what hold the world together.  To be in good debt means that our lives are so dependent on past generations, the abundance of the natural world, the goodwill of others, that the only reasonable way to live is, as Paul writes, to “let no debt remain outstanding, except – except – the continuing debt to love another.”

One of the gifts of a Sabbatical is being temporarily released from loving the world in the particular way one has otherwise committed to.  An immediate effect is being freed up to love parts of the world one may not get around to loving were the rush of life to just keep rushing.

“Love is the committed presence and practice that ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:14), the fruit filling that makes everything a bit more delicious. Love, at the very least—or perhaps the very most—keeps us together.”