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Every day, every single day, we must remember these words said by our savior.  As we make choice after choice about how we are going to live our lives, these words tell us the direction we must take!  It’s straightforward advice given to us by Jesus himself.

Can you even imagine being with thousands of people waiting to discover your future and hoping and praying to hear those words so we can begin the life we’ve been promised in heaven with Jesus?  If we’ve lived our lives according to Jesus’ commandments, we hope that is where we are headed, but it still will be earth-shattering to be at that moment in time. 

So let’s think about our past.  When it comes to feeding the hungry and providing water for those who are thirsty, we’ve fed our families and then hopefully we’ve worked at or donated to a food shelf for hungry people.  We probably donated to places like the Union Gospel Mission or Feed My Starving Children.  Hopefully, we have even donated to groups helping people around the world who are not as lucky as most people in America where we have many resources readily available.  There are groups like World Vision who even dig wells for people who live in parts of the world where they walk miles to bring water home to their families.

Then Jesus talked about our welcoming strangers.  Have we gone out of our way to meet new neighbors, new church members, or people we work with?  I have even taught my Faith Formation children at church that it is their job to befriend new students.  There have been many studies showing how many people (and even children) who are lonely.  We need to “love our neighbor as ourselves” and that means all of God’s children.

We are fortunate to have places like Goodwill and Mom’s Programs to donate clothes to.  In America, most of us have far more clothing than we need.  We could certainly share.  Places like World Vision and Catholic Relief Services are helping clothe people in parts of the world where people own next to nothing.

And as for visiting the sick, how many of us do that?  If our parents or someone we know are in a hospital or nursing home, we usually hate to go there but we try to visit as often as we can.  Nursing homes and hospitals are not usually very appealing places, but it means so much to someone captive there to have visitors – someone they know to talk to.  Can you imagine being there for days on end, often in pain, with no one you know?  There is also a staff that is usually too busy to sit and talk with you. I have been there, and I know how long the days seem, especially if you do not have any visitors.  And it is a sacrifice for many people to visit.  They usually have jobs and families to care for and often do not have a lot of extra time.

And the last thing Jesus mentions is visiting those in prison.  I am not sure how you can go about this, but I do know many churches have Prison Ministries where they must have some kind of arrangement or reciprocal exchange with the inmates of a local prison.

These are just some ideas of the ways we can perform so that we can accomplish some of the things Jesus expects us to do.  We want to be one of the people He can say to: “take your inheritance; the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”