Do you ever stop to wonder what God is thinking as He looks down at all of us?
In many ways, humanity has progressed a great deal over the years. We have learned to soar through the sky with the birds. We have traveled into the heavens, and we have had the opportunity to look back at Earth…up to a few decades ago, a view only God was privy to. Some of us have conquered the highest mountains. Others have explored the great depths of the seas. We have made great medical strides in ridding our bodies of disease, and prolonging our life here on Earth.
Yet, with all the progress we have made; there is still so much pain and sorrow that we inflict upon each other. Through hatred, and ignorance; we alter God’s plan and purpose for millions of souls. We drive people from their homes, we starve, we rape, and we murder. We hoard while others do without.
What is saddest most of all is, many times, the people doing these things say they do it in the name of God.
We humans have a way of complicating things. We let past history dictate our future actions…sometimes continuing to hate another person, or group…sometimes without knowing the reason why. We teach our children to hate the same people we do, just like our parents taught us to hate. As the years go by, the hatred is engrained into our souls. We long to avenge a past injustice, and yet many times we don’t even know the original offense. We simply kill for the sake of killing.
If we, for a brief moment, were to take a step back and refocus our relationship with God to its simplest form…that of a Father and His children, perhaps things might be clearer. Can you ever imagine going to your biological father and telling him you just murdered a sibling because you thought the sibling wasn’t showing enough honor to your father? Wouldn’t your father’s natural reaction be that of abject horror? Wouldn’t your father demand, “Who gave you the right to determine what is, and what isn’t pleasing to me?”
As far as I know, God didn’t send out a memo saying he was on vacation, and put one of us in charge.
According to John 4:8, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Anyone professing anything other than kindness and love for his fellow brothers and sisters, is not acting on God’s behalf…they are acting in their own selfish interests. It is their thirst for power, not their love of God that drives them to do the evil things they do.
Throughout history, the monsters among us always justified their horrible deeds by saying it was for the greater good of society. Whether they are hacking people to death in Africa, or marching Jews off to gas chambers in Europe, turning rice fields into killing fields, or flying planes into buildings…these animals hid behind their ideology that they were helping mankind. They cowered under the veil that they were doing God’s work by pointing out that one group, or one faith was superior to another.
The world has become complicated, and those spewing hate try to complicate God’s message in an effort to further their own agenda. Yet, God’s message is simple…”A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
Our world is out of balance right now. Those of us with faith have ignored the growth of hatred around us for far too long. The forces of good and evil do exist. There is vast group of people floating in the middle. This group, like the ocean…is being pulled back and forth by a gravitational pull, not by the moon in this case, but by the forces of good and evil.
The days of remaining on the sidelines are no longer an option. Edmund Burke said, “All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”
It is our responsibility to share God’s love with all those we come in contact with by our words and our actions. It is possible to change the world one person at a time.
It is our responsibility to be guided by God’s love in our own lives. We must not allow our actions to tell a different story than our lips. We live in a gray world, but our faith world is not…our only choice is right versus wrong, good versus evil, love versus hate.
We hear the following at weddings, but it has more relevance than just for the ears of newlyweds. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres”.1 Corinthians 13:4
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”,1 Corinthians 13:13
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