There is a strong drawing in the comfort of a warm bed on a cold morning. It is an announcement of protection and blessing to feel that soft strength around you, keeping the chill away. There is reassurance, safety and privilege. To know that the frost that covers the roof and ground, surrounding and covering everything that is unprotected, does not touch you, is satisfying and gratifying. I do not lightly take my leave of that peaceful pleasure that lies within flannel sheets, insulating blanket and comforter. Some mornings, it is nothing less than call of duty that moves me to slide out and quickly grab my robe.

The shower is not a bad transition, though. That pulsing stream of hot water, massaging my neck and shoulders, is a good way of moving from the snug nest into the rest of my day. I turn the water off, draw back the curtain and move into the lesser delights of preparing for work.

We have similar draws to the comfortable areas of our lives, work within the established patterns and places, knowing what we are to do, what is expected and how to do it. I like living in that part of my life, staying with what I know and am confident of. I suspect it is a strong human trait, unchanged over the millennia.

But the call of love, the call of Christ, the call of service, often moves us beyond the comfortable. The showing of compassion is easily done with a check and a stamp, easier still with the click of a mouse after the credit card information is filled in. But the stranger in the ditch, the dirty child, the reckless teen, the strung-out junkie, the half-wit elderly woman living alone with her plastic bucket toilet, these are not so easy.

But they are, also, the family of Christ, these, the least of the brethren. Our compassion for them will not be forgotten by the One who died for them as well as for us. That, too, is comforting, is it not?

H. Arnett

12/2/10