Hello, friend, and welcome to Our Daily Bread. I'm Sheridan Voizzi, and I've titled today's reading, When to Sacrifice.

In February 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis was just beginning, a newspaper columnist's concerns struck me.

Would we willingly self-isolate, she wondered, changing our work, travel and shopping habits,

so others wouldn't get sick?

This isn't just a test of clinical resources, she wrote, but of our willingness to put ourselves out for others.

Suddenly, the need for virtue was front-page news.

It can be hard to consider others' needs while we're anxious about our own.

Thankfully, we're not left with willpower alone to meet the need.

We can ask the Holy Spirit to give us love

to replace our indifference, joy to counter sadness, peace to replace our anxiety, forbearance

or patience to push out our impulsiveness, kindness to care about others, goodness to see to their

needs, faithfulness to keep our promises, gentleness

instead of harshness, and self-control to lift us beyond self-centeredness.

While we won't be perfect at all this, we're called to seek the Spirit's gifts of virtue

regularly.

Author Richard Foster once described holiness as the ability to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

And such holiness is needed every day, not just in the pandemic.

Do we have the capacity to make sacrifices for the sake of others?

Holy Spirit, fill us with the power to do what needs to be done.

Today's scripture reading is from Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 to 26.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ

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