THE EGO STRIPPED, KISSED AND GRATEFUL

Sometime in the next week or so, someone will cross your path who needs to know that God loves them. The challenge is a simple one: don’t pass up the chance to share the good news! -- from Rev. Mac McKenney's Sermon of January 23, 2022

I read that and was reminded of the suggestion put forth by the child Nikka, age 6, who said, "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." 

Those are two of the most profoundly moving ideas that have come to my conscious thinking in a long time...if not ever. 

I suspect in most people's mind, both would be followed by the one-word question: How?

"How" is precisely what all our Step-Up studying of the Sermon has been teaching us for these many years. Our Step-Up Study work needs the Sermon as its base...there is no questioning the how-to of "turn the other cheek." We may "why" it to the outside of enough, but we can't honestly ask "how?"

The Sermon shucks the shield of our egoic mind which will ever find a fig leaf so I See Me is covered...justified in fact. 

Plainly, the Sermon on the Mount strips the ego bare-butt naked, kisses that same ego on the lips and leaves it grateful. Naught else can do that, according to me.

How else can we begin to learn to love by starting with someone we hate? How else do we recognize someone who needs to know that God loves them to whom we can share the good news?

The transmuted ego resists not evil but freely loves!

Thank you.