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Raise your hand if your heart is breaking today Nepal , Baltimore, perhaps your own town, your own home and family - in crisis mode.
I daresay most of us would raise our hand when asked if we are concerned, heartbroken, despairing, even pessimistic about what is going on in our world today.
Perhaps our hearts may be resigned to the fact that there seems to be more bad than good going on around us. I know I've experienced a twinge of, what's the sense in it all, resignation a time or two over the past couple of days.
What are we to do? Insulate ourselves? Harden our hearts? Hid under a rock? Sometimes those seem like the best options to me. - If the world is this corrupted, if earthquakes can kill close to 5.000 people in a few well placed shimmers. If people can lose their minds and riot, loot and brawl in the streets with such abandon, then why should we care?
Aren't our own lives fraught with enough pain without having to get emotionally invested in the world at large? Sometimes I feel that, to invest too heavily outside my own sphere would shatter me, so I shut off that outreach valve. I couldn't think beyond the walls of my own home, much less my neighborhood, another state, another country of people who were hurting. All I could do was hunker down and get through my own set of circumstances.
I think many of us deal with life this way. No matter what the problem - whether it be inside the confines of our own families, or a more global disaster - when things go wrong, we can only control one thing and that is ourselves.
When all is stripped away, and we search for solutions to problems either great or small, the solution is as simple as - It has to start with ourselves, because, like I said that is all we can control.
So in that vein, in any given situation we are either part of the problem or part of the solution. It seems a simple choice to me. I choose to be part of the solution. I choose peace. I choose love. I choose mercy. I choose grace. I choose to go where I am led and to do what is asked of me.
In a complicated world we need to break things down to their lowest common denominator, and start there. To me the common denominator is - we are all human beings in need of love, acceptance, help and grace. So, let [the solution] start with me.
~Luke 6:35-37New Century Version (NCV)
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without hoping to get anything back. Then you will have a great reward, and you will be children of the Most High God, because he is kind even to people who are ungrateful and full of sin.Show mercy, just as your Father shows mercy.
“Don’t judge others, and you will not be judged. Don’t accuse others of being guilty, and you will not be accused of being guilty. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
What are we to do? Insulate ourselves? Harden our hearts? Hid under a rock? Sometimes those seem like the best options to me. - If the world is this corrupted, if earthquakes can kill close to 5.000 people in a few well placed shimmers. If people can lose their minds and riot, loot and brawl in the streets with such abandon, then why should we care?
Aren't our own lives fraught with enough pain without having to get emotionally invested in the world at large? Sometimes I feel that, to invest too heavily outside my own sphere would shatter me, so I shut off that outreach valve. I couldn't think beyond the walls of my own home, much less my neighborhood, another state, another country of people who were hurting. All I could do was hunker down and get through my own set of circumstances.
I think many of us deal with life this way. No matter what the problem - whether it be inside the confines of our own families, or a more global disaster - when things go wrong, we can only control one thing and that is ourselves.
When all is stripped away, and we search for solutions to problems either great or small, the solution is as simple as - It has to start with ourselves, because, like I said that is all we can control.
So in that vein, in any given situation we are either part of the problem or part of the solution. It seems a simple choice to me. I choose to be part of the solution. I choose peace. I choose love. I choose mercy. I choose grace. I choose to go where I am led and to do what is asked of me.
In a complicated world we need to break things down to their lowest common denominator, and start there. To me the common denominator is - we are all human beings in need of love, acceptance, help and grace. So, let [the solution] start with me.
~Luke 6:35-37New Century Version (NCV)
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without hoping to get anything back. Then you will have a great reward, and you will be children of the Most High God, because he is kind even to people who are ungrateful and full of sin.Show mercy, just as your Father shows mercy.
“Don’t judge others, and you will not be judged. Don’t accuse others of being guilty, and you will not be accused of being guilty. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
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