Abandoning God'sCommandment

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Mark 7:1-10

We walk away all the time
when we don't get our way
when we think we have been slighted
when the world wants a small share.

Love is the author, the beginning
and the end of who we are to be
yet we take our share and believe
no one else but us are truly deserving.

The flame of love that is living spirit
breathes promise and forgiveness daily
turn our broken dreams to possibilities
and ruins all our tender vanities.

God's love demands room for all
honor and dignity for the inside and out
enough for the wanderer and the home bound
a banquet for the rejected and the shunned.