Take Your Responsibility Seriously

18 Oct

“We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.”
~ Albert Einstein

We have always been called to cooperate with God.  When you look at that word, you see a very deep meaning:  co-operate, to “operate with” or work with.  We were first instructed to do that in the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.  God made them male and female, in His own image and likeness.  Then, God instructed his people to be fruitful and multiply.  God had created the world for us and He charged us to fill it and subdue it and bring it to completion.

We all know what happened.  We allowed sin to enter this wonderful world and became distant from our God.  Even in that distance, God promised to send a redeemer.  That promise was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus took on our own nature, becoming human.  He died on the cross and rose from the dead to restore eternal life to us.  Immediately before He ascended to heaven, Jesus gathered His disciples on the mountain and gave them the same message as in Genesis:  cooperate with Him.  “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”

It is our sacred human responsibility to do the best we are capable of doing because it when we do our best that we bring Christ to the world, that we tell the Good News.  That is the sacred mission to which each of us have been charged by virtue of our baptism.  It is a mission that we should never shirk, that we should never view lightly.  The responsibility that has been given to us is an incredible responsibility.  Some might even say that it is an incredible, if not impossible, burden.  And it would be were not the grace of God made available to us.

That is what makes our mission easier.  If we go off and try to accomplish it all on our own, we will have big trouble.  But if we open ourselves up to God’s grace, He will fill us with everything that we need to complete our mission.  It might be a sacred human responsibility; but, we do not have to do it alone.  Because, when we do our best, we co-operate with God.

FAITH ACTION:  Do your best to make someone’s life better today.