As I pray with today’s readings, I am drawn to Lot and Abram. I find myself easily imagining the irritations that marked their days of sharing land, a time seemingly saturated with the herdsmen’s frustrations and griping. I imagine these days as ripe with the quarrels and squabbles that mark many of our days at home, at work, on the road, in the market, at church . . . seemingly everywhere. Such are the realities that emerge when we as humans who share the space of daily lives – literally and figuratively, unintentionally and sometimes quite intentionally – bump into one another.

When I experience such a “bump,” I recognize how easy it can be for a less-than-charitable side of myself to seek to assert its presence. At times, I am surprised by how readily I am prone to frustration and how fully wrapped in my own limited interests and perspectives I can be. But, oh the narrow gate that beckons and the witness of Abram that invites us to affirm “we are kin.”

Mindful of the truth of our kinship, may we – when experiencing the inevitable bumping into one another that marks each of our lives – consciously choose what Love demands – the constriction of the narrow gate – and genuinely affirm in word and in deed, “Let there be no strife between us.”