By way of encouragement, God tells us in Scripture, “I will
remove the stony heart from their bodies, and replace it with a natural heart…”
(Ezek 11:19) But I’m still waiting, asking myself when and how this will
happen.
In our community the other day there wasn’t much coffee.
Coffee does me good down here in the desert…it helps me…I am old.
I was worried about not having any, about spending a few
hours dull and weak, and so– without perceiving the evil I was doing–I went
into the kitchen and drank up all that was left.
Afterwards, after suffering all day and making my
confessions, I thought in shame of my selfishness, of the easy with which I
excluded my two brothers from those black, bitter remains.
It seemed a tiny thing, yet in that cup of coffee, taken and
not shared with my brothers, is the root of all the evil which disturbs us, the
poison of all the arrogance with selfishness, riches, and power create.
The difference between me and Jesus is right here, in an
affair that seems simple but isn’t at all: after a whole lifetime it is still
there to make you think. Jesus would have
left the coffee for his brothers: I excluded my brothers.
- The God who Comes by Carlo Carretto
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