Tag: Love

more LOVE

HebrewDawn: more LOVE
There have been a lot  of things posted on social media on a variety of topics that are really causing my heart to break. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also seen many things shared that warm my heart as well. But what am I gathering from this range of posts is that we need… more love.

More often than not we feel this deep need to be right and make our point known to all. Whether we are pro-life, for gun control, planning to vote for Trum, pro-choice, hoping Bernie Sanders makes it on the ballot for November, against gun control, our hope that Hillary Clinton is our first female president, we all have a common need. We all need to know and be loved. It doesn’t matter how right or wrong we may be on a given topic, but it does matter how much love and kindness we show to the people we encounter.

When I think about all of this, I keep hearing the words “love one another as I have loved you.” It’s so simple, yet so necessary. Far too many people are going through challenges unknown to those around them, and the last thing they need in their darkest moments are words of hate, judgement or condemnation. Whether or not you are a Christian, I think we can get behind Jesus’ call to love one another. Deep within my bones, I believe it’s far better to step away from the keyboard, phone, and off our soapbox than to continue proving someone else wrong.

Would you rather be remembered for being right or for being filled with love?

HebrewDawn: This is my commandment that you love one another. John 15:12

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” – John 15:11-17 (NRSV)

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My heart hurts

There is so much pain and suffering in the world, and my heart hurts. 

In most of my professional life I have worked with our young members of society (birth to 18 years old). In most recent years, my work has primarily been with those in middle school and high school…born between 1997 – 2004. With the recent tragedy in Paris, bombing in Beirut, and air strikes on ISIS, and refusal to accept Syrian refugees, my heart is breaking for this generation. 

These students were born in or on the cusp of a post-9/11 world. For the  entirety (or close to) of their lives, our country has been at war. We’ve been told that we are waging a war on terror.  But honestly, what does that even mean?  Who is defining what or who that terror is.

I’m no longer concerned with the finger pointing of who is responsible or the cause. I want peace. I want my daughter to live in a different world from my students, and know a world not at war.  I want love and dialogue to  be the negotiation technique, rather than sanctions and air strikes. I want our men and women in the armed forces to be home with their loved ones rather than be deployed in more locations than we could possibly count. 

My heart breaks for Paris, but more than anything it breaks for our world. 

A powerful response by a husband for his wife killed in the  Paris tragedy.