Love your enemies because Love conquers all

I hate hate.  It outrages me.  Prejudice jokes. Lumping a group of people together and making an overall judgement.  The remarks and disrespect towards Latino people.  I hate it.  Nothing infuriates me more than ignorance about another person or people that turns into hate and disrespect for one another.  There has been so much anger and hate towards people who are different from each other in my line of sight lately.  It’s really been overwhelming and somewhat stressful to be honest.  By nature I am a peacemaker.  I make it my job to see to it that everyone is happy.  It’s quite a burden seeing how it’s pretty rare that everyone is always happy.  And if they are it’s because peacemakers like me are bending themselves in half trying to soften the blow for each party.

Tonight during my meditation, I thought about all the hate in the world. All the anger and ill will towards others that there is.  (Really uplifting, right?)  I was looking at a replica of the Pieta. I thought about how ingrained this conflict is – so ingrained in our world that even my cats’ natural inclination is to fight one another.  But upon looking at the Pieta while thinking about these things I thought about the One who loved.  I looked at Him lying in his mother’s arms.  The love He had for this hateful world and the love that she had for her son.  I thought about all the hate and all the pain and suffering it had caused… but if you think about the power of love… Hate really isn’t stronger.  Sure we see it more often, maybe.  A lot of times we’re more drawn to it. Why else would newspapers have the saying “If it bleeds, it leads”?  But what act of hate has been remembered for 2,000 years?
Lord, heal me of the hate that I hold in my own heart towards those who have hurt me.  Help me to love.

You can’t make me! (Oh, wait…)

Well that was hard.

I was planning on completely avoiding a certain situation tonight, as I was pretty much predicting that it would be difficult for me to handle. But by a series of (unfortunate?) events, I really couldn’t bow out gracefully, so I gave in and faced the music.

It took every ounce of courage and Christianity I had in me to smile and not to run out of the room to cry.

But I made it through.

And I feel good about it.

I’m glad that I didn’t run away from something of which I was scared. I’m glad that instead of hiding away and letting things be awkward and difficult, I stood up. I smiled. And I was able to sincerely and kindly speak to everyone involved.

I’m glad that God made me do it.

You see, sometimes God makes us do what we don’t want to do.

Sometimes he puts obstacles in our way so that we learn what He wants us to learn, whether we like it or not.

I learned something about myself tonight, I feel more compassionate about the whole situation, and I’m just a happier person overall.

Thanks Abba. My heart feels a lot better, now that You healed that bit of it.

Hey! Different is good!

Remember the long-running Arby’s slogan: “Hey! Different is good!”?

It was all about how Arby’s was better than Mc’y D’s and BK because they had totally different food and not just burgers.

But we fear change. We instinctively fear new things because there is a sense of the unknown.

The trick?

Thrive on it!

Instead of shrinking back into the shadows of uncertainty, feed upon that rush of having to figure things out, the feeling you get from exploring something and discovering new wonders.

So often we get stuck in these ruts and begin to feel depressed about our lives. But we are blind to the way to get out: CHANGE SOMETHING.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result, and yet… we just keep walking in our straight lines with our heads down.

And it’s especially easy to do in our prayer life! We memorize prayers, and we get into habits of saying them, and unless we progress past them and make prayer more than a rote set of words that we say, we just end up calling out from the ditch: “Helllllooooo?! My faith is stuck!”

So try something different!

Whether it be a Rosary, just hanging out and chatting with God, Adoration, meditation, contemplation, Ignatian spiritual exercises, Daily Mass, retreat… Just DO something that you don’t normally do.

Act now, and you’ll receive this lovely renewed devotion to God with every order!

3 Words

It’s the shortest verse in the Bible.

John 11:35: “And Jesus wept.”

In three words, we have the realest, most human moment of our divine savior.

Jesus cried.
His friend died, and he was moved to full-out tears.
He raised him from the dead a mere 8 verses later, but in that split-second, he mourned his friend.

And what a savior we have! Not only unafraid of crying (what a man!), but also so moved with love that even though He knew that in a minute He would go ahead and fix everything, He still FELT.

How beautiful.

Standard of Living

It is possible to believe in something and still fail to live up to it.
~Dr. Wilson on “House, M.D.”

I was watching an old House rerun on TV the other day, and it was back when they were doing a whole run of shows challenging House’s atheistic/gnostic views with patients who were deeply religious. It was really well done and interesting (surprise, surprise!), I must say. This particular quote comes from House being all high and mighty because someone who was a borderline-crazy religious person was a big fat sinner… and Wilson responds with this wisdom (to which House has zero reply).

What beliefs do you fail to uphold every single day? What standards have you set for yourself based on your morals and values… which ones have you not quite reached?

The Lord, who sees in secret, knows how much I’ve failed. It’s a lot. More than anyone could/should know.

How many times do we say one thing with our lips and another with our lives? Just like the hypocrites that Jesus criticizes over and over again!

I catch myself doing this all the time!

And yet… the miracle of it all… is that HE LOVES US ANYWAY and still wants us to be his disciples!

Look at what Paul, one of the top 5 apostles, felt:

Romans 7:15-21

What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.
Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good.
So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.
For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.
Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.

Talk about using the weak to show up the strong! Sheesh.

1 Cor 1:26-31

Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
Not many of you were wise by human standards,
not many were powerful,
not many were of noble birth.
Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise,
and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong,
and God chose the lowly and despised of the world,
those who count for nothing,
to reduce to nothing those who are something,
so that no human being might boast before God.
It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus,
who became for us wisdom from God,
as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
so that, as it is written,
“Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.”

I can only hope that, little by little, I can gain all these things in order to be ABLE to boast in the Lord! But first, I have to get rid of the tendency to boast about myself. And try to follow what I believe, practice what I preach and all.

And walk the walk that I talk.