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The world feels like an ugly place right now, and if I am being honest, it has always been this way. The only difference is that now we have all the news at our fingertips. We know all of the world’s problems, yet we cannot solve our own.
Right now – the one thing we are so good at is being "PRO" something. Pro-life, pro-choice, pro- vaccines, pro-freedom, pro-immigration, Pro-guns, etc. The pro-somethings are nothing but our imposing ideas to each other, but what if we are all wrong or right?
On your death bed, do you think you will lay there thinking – I am grateful I was pro-life, pro-choice, or will you have regrets being pro-vaccines or pro- medical freedom?
Would it matter to you how you engaged with others, even pertaining to life-or-death issues? Would you lookback and say I stood up for what I believed in without bullying those I disagreed with?
Do you think at the end of our lives, we would look back and say: "I am so proud that I won that Facebook argument"?
Don't get me wrong, someone once said if you don't stand for something you will fall for everything. We should absolutely stand up for what we believe in, but not at the expense of someone else free will.
I think we should listen to each other more. Listen not to respond but to understand. If we listen, we can catch a glimpse of other peoples' paths and we can understand why they make the choices they make.
What if we were pro-listening, pro-understanding, pro-unity? What if we were pro-love?
Evidently, we have not done the love thing correctly, because if we did we would gain understanding and we would have compassion for one another.
Love covers a multitude of sins and it teaches us that we can disagree and still love. When we love others, we open the window of opportunity to have honest, safe conversations without fear of judgment.
Jesus’s love for us is bigger than our sin and accusations of the enemy, and if we say that we are Jesus’s followers our love should just be as loud. We have to love people by our actions, just like Jesus did.
1 John 4:12 -No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:20 - Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.