We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; in deed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul ... if there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Friday, February 6, 2015

It is easy to love those who love you



“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not the publicans the same?” (Matthew 3:46)  
Here is a scripture that I truly love, and yet I don’t think the Lord wants us to be stupid about it.  Yesterday I talked about some elements of Love in a particular scripture verse. Two elements I didn’t talk about were respect and acceptance. We can love a dysfunctional person without being co-dependent. The first step is to follow the first and great commandment “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind… And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
If we love other as God, who knows all things, loves them we accept and respect them as a child of God even as we ourselves are. We also accept that even as we ourselves have faults, we accept that others do as well. We probably don’t know what happened to make an individual angry, violent, or mean spirited, but we are not going to put ourselves in harms way. Neither am I (speaking only for myself here) going to allow an individual’s rough exterior keep me from loving them.
I just think it so sad when we allow a person’s low esteem to keep us from caring about them.

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