LIVING AT PEACE IN OUR NEW HOME

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much. -- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

It is almost a certainty that everyone in the world wants to be loved...most of us believing that we want to love. We slowly learn our difficulty is that we must needs give love...ah, but give love to the unlovable. We have never accepted that as the missing action in our desire to love and be loved...we want to feel love wrapping us in feelings of safety, security, peace and joy. We've never envisioned how it might feel to give love to someone we don't already love, to take the action within our own self to give love away.

There's the rub...we don't have to ponder about loving our already loved ones, our pets, lovers, parents, friends. It is the act of giving love to our self-perceived haters, our detractors, our bullies, our thieves that is our full stop. But that is precisely what the Sermon tells us is ours to do. Specifically, at Matthew 5:43: You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven....For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?

What reward, in deed. We are seeking the reward of simply getting over our own self. It is our own self-centered fear (which, who's kidding whom, is paranoia in fancy dress) that is the source of our woes.

What takes the place of our obsession with ourself if/when we do get over ourself? Why, love, of course. The whole world is our potential friend. Hate nobody, resist no one, take nothing personally...here lives the love we seek, our Father.

Beware the red flashing light of warning: The self-determined objective of getting over our own self through study, diligent work giving over, concentrating on doing good...ain't gonna get us there. Will make unbelievers out of us, more likely.

Remember, we go to God for God and that is all...he's slow but he's certain-sure. We've done all the hard work making our decision to live a turned-over life...now we await instructions from within. As we wait, we do the decent for a passing stranger. Or for our nemesis. Just for practice.

There it is. It is in looking back, when we are at peace in our new Home, that we realize the kept-promise: He goes before us to make the crooked places straight.

Thank you.