Fill up your storeroom with good

7^thSunday of Ordinary Time year C 2019:

More sage wisdom from Christ this week.  These last several Sundays we have been learning from Christ how to put into action his own brand of love and mercy.  Today, especially, he is showing us the way to growing in patience and kindness.  Why notice the splinter in your brother’s eye when you have a beam in your own?  I can readily admit that I’m a card-carrying member of the “beam in the eye club.”  I’m an expert at recognizing other people’s problems, when I have enough of my own problems.  So, this is practical advice to grow in patience.

But, I wanted to reflect on another part of the gospel today. I really like this comment from Jesus: A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good; an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil.  This is a good reminder that our actions really begin with our hearts. If our hearts are filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and mercy, then our actions are good and loving and holy.  But, if our hearts are filled with envy, jealousy, lust, greed, etc, our actions turn out to be evil.  What kind of person do you want to be?  If you want to be a good person, and most people generally do say that they want to be good people, then the key is to fill up your heart with goodness.

How do you do that?  I really like this image of a store room.  Jesus says that from the store of good comes good, from the store of evil comes evil.  So, what kind of inventory are you putting into your hearts?  Our daily lives, our little actions, our habits, our thoughts, our motives, these are the ways that we fill out the storeroom of our hearts. So, what does you inventory look like? 

These words from Jesus reminded me of a Native American parable I heard one time that has really stuck with me.  A young man asked his grandfather this question: “Grandfather, how can I be good?  Often, I want to do good and to be good, but it feels like there is a force within me that moves me to choose things that are evil and wrong.”  The grandfather looked at his grandson with love and said: “in the heart of every man and woman there are two wolves who are fighting to win for control of your life.  One wolf is good, the other is evil.”  The grandson replied, “Grandfather, which wolf ends up winning?”  “The wolf that you feed,” he answered.

I really loved this image: the one that you feed.  We often think about good and evil in terms of big and dramatic actions or habits.  But, our hearts are really formed by the small things.  The daily actions.  Which wolf are we feeding?  What are we putting into our storeroom?  

I’ve been reading a lot recently about habits.  I have more than one bad habit that I would like to get rid of.  And I would like to have the habit of better diet and exercise.  From everything I’ve read, the best advice I’ve gotten so far is that the only way to get rid of a bad habit or to start a good habit is to focus on the small things, the microsteps.  These little actions every day feed the good wolf.  These little actions stock up our store room with good.

Jesus calls us to be like him: every disciple will be like his teacher.  Jesus shows us an amazing example of goodness, kindness, love, and mercy.  If we are going to be like our teacher, we are going to need a storeroom that is packed full of goodness.