When Mother Teresa was asked, “What the biggest problem in the world today?”

She answered, without hesitation, “The biggest problem in the world today is that we draw the circle of our family too small. We need to draw it larger every day.”

With all that is evil and wrong in this world today it would be easy to answer that question with a hundred different events. That’s what makes Mother Teresa’s response so jilting. She is saying that the problem is not so much with the world as it is with us. We need to see more people as our neighbor than we are currently doing.

I see Jesus doing this in his baptism. In his baptism he included us in his righteousness. He identified with humanity, with our need to be cleansed, and our need to be made pure. If you have been baptized you have been drawn, by Jesus’ baptism, into the circle of God’s family.

Thanks to Brett Blair

My Commentary:

When Mother Teresa said that the world’s greatest problem is that we draw the circle of our family too small, she shifted the focus from headlines to hearts. Her words are unsettling because they refuse to let us blame distant forces or faceless systems.

 Instead, they ask us to examine the quiet boundaries we draw around compassion — who belongs, who matters, who counts as “one of us.”

It is easy to catalogue the evils of the world. It is harder to admit that many of them begin with exclusion: with deciding that someone else’s suffering is not our responsibility. Mother Teresa reminds us that love does not fail first in the streets or in governments. Love fails when we shrink our sense of kinship.

Jesus enlarges that circle in a radical way at his baptism. Though sinless, he steps into the water with sinners. He does not stand apart from humanity. He stands with it. In doing so, he gathers us into his righteousness and claims us as family. Baptism becomes more than a private blessing — it is a public declaration that God’s family is wider than we imagine.

To follow Jesus, then, is to keep redrawing the circle. Each day invites us to make room for one more neighbor, one more stranger, one more child of God. The world changes not when we identify the greatest problem, but when we let grace stretch the boundaries of our love.

Who in YOUR private life and in public life do YOU keep out of YOUR circle. What needs to change inside YOU to let them into YOUR circle?

HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS TO STAY SILENT WHEN SOMEONE EXPECTS YOU TO BE ENRAGED!

Please help others to enlarge their circle by sharing today’s message.