Katie's prayer: Kutless' "Saved"

The love that fills my heart

The past few weeks, I have been slowly borrowing every VHS tape and DVD that church currently has. Watching each and every one of them, deciding if it's a resource I can or want to use. The movie I watched tonight is called "Entertaining Angels: the Dorothy Day Story" (see imdb) It's about the real life story of Dorothy Day. For those of you who don't know... this amazing woman, after converting to Catholicism, dedicated her life to the poor. She was basically Mother Teresa for America in the early 1900's. She wanted to bring to life the Christian message of everyone is Jesus and should be treated as such.

There was one part in the movie that really struck home for me. One of the homeless people being cared for by Dorothy committed suicide. After this, the people helping her took a vote and decided they weren't going to house drunks, prostitutes, druggies, or mental people anymore. It was causing too many problems for them. Dorothy went straight to the church and cried out in anger at God. Yelling. Because she didn't feel God anymore. She was tired of helping the poor. Tired of cleaning toilets all day. She then went to an old friend and said she was quitting. She was going to go back to her old life. Get back together with an old boyfriend/baby daddy. Get a job and get her life together. (Boy have I experienced that feeling before - minus the baby daddy part)

She went back to her home and, without going into to much detail, came to her senses. She told a particularly deranged woman that she saw Jesus in her. The woman argued saying that she couldn't. That no one could love her. Dorothy explained that she did see Jesus and that she loved her, that God loved her, that everyone there loved her. She then went into this speech about how she realized she was trying to do things by herself instead of God working through her. (experience that often too!) About how they needed to show their visitors love, God's love.

When I heard the phrase "love that fills my heart" in today's song, all I could think of was this story. The love Dorothy had not only filled her heart, but overflowed. She shared all she had with the poor. She shared the love God had for them. I think we all need to have a heart like Dorothy's. Let the love of God that fills our hearts overflow to those around us.