What should we do?

Being cooped up in the house as a child was more challenging to my mother than to my brother, sister and me. We kept chanting, “What should we do?” and my mother had to stop her work and be an activities director! Sometimes, my dad would pull a tube out of our TV and we cried, “What should we do?”  He forced us to find something to do inside that was as interesting and as wide open as the outdoors. “What should we do?” has a set of expectations – if what we do is to be satisfying, it must fulfill our expectations and involve more than what we are doing right now.

In our Gospel today, the same question is asked.  And John’s answer doesn’t focus on accomplishments, rather, on relationships. The good news preached by John  is that our relationship with others makes visible our relationship with Jesus.

Just like John, our lives are about others. John turns the question into “How shall we be?” We are called to be the presence of Christ in the world.  We are called to be just and loving toward each other.  Or still yet, the question is replaced by “Who shall we be?” We are called to be Christ for each other.