{"id":308070,"date":"2021-10-19T01:00:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T23:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-gospel-a-leap-in-the-dark\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:42:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:42:46","slug":"living-the-gospel-a-leap-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-gospel-a-leap-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Gospel: A leap in the dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Signing a blank cheque, making a leap in the dark … trusting in God can often appear just too big a challenge to us and we don\u2019t find the courage or strength to try. By recognising how small we are, asking help and allowing someone to take care of us with tenderness, we can find a way to recognise the providential Love of a Father who will never abandon us. And we in turn can circulate this love in the world.<\/em> Sharing<\/strong> Our house was half-destroyed by an earthquake, so my children and I were sleeping out in the open air and we had next to nothing to eat. One morning I had literally nothing to cook, but placing my trust in God who is our Father, I set a pot of water on the fire. Just as it was about to boil, someone arrived carrying a bag full of fruit and vegetables. No sooner had I started to cook soup than another friend knocked at the door bringing us some meat and a little rice! When my children came home from school they couldn\u2019t believe it and asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s happened, Mum? You told us there wouldn\u2019t be anything to eat today\u201d. So I told the whole story to them, and even though they claim not to believe in God any more, they heard how my prayers had been answered. However, it didn\u2019t end there. After lunch, I felt drawn to ask Jesus to send me someone in need so I could share the food we\u2019d received with them. The very next day I met a young man who asked me if I could give him a piece of bread. I welcomed him with love, and even if he was anxious not to abuse our hospitality because he could see how poor we were, I made him sit down at our table and I served lunch to him. (Lusby \u2013 Colombia) A circuit of Love<\/strong> Arriving at university one day, I bumped into an old man dressed in rags, nearly blind, covered in open wounds because he kept falling over. And he was so dirty. In him, I saw the image of Christ on the cross. I helped him up and asked if he\u2019d like to take a bath. I went into the university compound and somehow found the courage to ask the Rector, a devout Muslim, for permission to use his own personal bathroom because it was the only one with a bathtub, so that the old man could take a bath with my assistance. He was certainly surprized by my request! But he not only agreed but also personally provided the old man with soap. I then escorted the old man to his home, bought him some food and gave his room a much-needed clean up. The next day the Rector called me to his office to explain my motivation for what I had done. I told him how the choice to love our neighbour united millions of people of all religions. He was very interested in getting to know more, and he gave a contribution to buy some essentials for the old man. That\u2019s not all. Some of my fellow students who had witnessed the whole scene put some money together to buy new clothes for him. (Bassam \u2013 Iraq) Three cows<\/strong> For a while I\u2019ve been helping a boy from a poor family I\u2019d met during our mission to the Kakuma refugee camp in the north east of Kenya, paying his school fees. Sadly the moment arrived when I couldn\u2019t sustain this help anymore and I told him of my own financial difficulties. A little while later this same boy appealed to me again for help, which made me suffer even more because I couldn\u2019t help him. So I took the decision to sell the one cow I was keeping at my parents\u2019 house and use the money for his schooling. Naturally he was delighted to get back to school. One day in the parish I\u2019ve been serving for nearly a year, a group of parishioners arrived to visit me because they\u2019d heard my father was unwell. Among the gifts they brought were not one but three cows! I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes. I thought of the promise of the Gospel: \u201ca good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. (Father David \u2013 Kenya) <\/p>\n

collated by Maria Grazia Berretta<\/em><\/p>\n

(from\u00a0Il Vangelo del Giorno, Citt\u00e0 Nuova, anno VII, n.4, settembre-ottobre 2021)<\/em>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Signing a blank cheque, making a leap in the dark … trusting in God can often appear just too big a challenge to us and we don\u2019t find the courage or strength to try. By recognising how small we are, asking help and allowing someone to take care of us with tenderness, we can find a way to recognise the providential Love of a Father who will never abandon us. And we in turn can circulate this love in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}