How Should We Live?

I am moved by hymns and often make their words a part of my prayers. This hymn, “When the Church of Jesus,” has long been one of my favorites. It challenges us to live in the world as a people of compassion and caring.

When the Church of Jesus
Shuts its outer door,
Lest the roar of traffic
Drown the voice of prayer:
May our prayers, Lord, make us
Ten times more aware
That the world we banish
Is our Christian care.

If our hearts are lifted
Where devotion soars
High above this hungry
Suffering world of ours:
Lest our hymns should drug us
To forget its needs,
Forge our Christian worship
Into Christian deeds.

Lest the gifts we offer,
Money, talents, time,
Serve to salve our conscience
To our secret shame:
Lord, reprove, inspire us
By the way you give;
Teach us, dying Savior,
How true Christians live.

Fred Pratt Green, 1969

How should we live our lives? In what ways does Christ compel us to service? Does the life of Christ inspire us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves?

As the hymn says, “Lord, reprove, inspire us.” May it be so.