The group Black Eyed Peas said it best when they said, “People got me questioning, where is the love? There is only one world, and that’s all we got!” It is easy to get overwhelmed looking at all the crazy things happening in the world and wondering how and why things are the way they are. I often also ask myself, where is the love?
The world is out of control, and it is overwhelmingly scary at times. It can really bring a person down trying to cope, and many times I have struggled. Fortunately, I have now come to a place where I feel blessed knowing that I can rise above the wrongness in the world. I will not let anyone change me. I will be my own person. I will know love, and make my focus to grow love in me even if the world around me opposes it. I don’t have to be out of control, but I can be in control by letting love be in me, and maybe that love will somehow have an effect on the negative world around me. I fight the negative in the world, when I oppose it and try to be a better person.
Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tender hearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. 1 Peter 3:8-9
As a believer in God, I am no longer a slave in bondage to the world. As God freed the slaves from Egypt and gave them a home of milk and honey, He gave them an understanding of a healthy way of life independent of the world, and dependant on God. I believe the world was created to have standard, and that God tried to establish that first with Israel so that once Israel got it, it could be communicated to the rest of the world. I believe God’s standard teaches us love. I believe it is important for us to understand who God is so that we can understand how to love one another as we were created to be.
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:31-34
God made it an inherited ability to understand love and kindness towards one another. God says that we will understand His commandments are instructions on how to love one another. God’s people know how to love.
There was a time when America stood by the law of God, as we are familiar with, “In God we trust.” John F. Kennedy said this:
“The teaching of their ancient belief is filled with truth for the present day. Its profound sense of justice, nation to nation, man to man, is an essential part of every religious and social order. The health of our society depends upon a deep and abiding respect for the basic commandments of the God of Israel.”
But today many of us seem to have lost the identity of who this God is.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. John 14:23-24
Jesus came with a message to tell us the commandments of God is knowing love.
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40
The world denies God for the most part, but I survive in a dying world knowing I live by a standard that loves unconditionally.
Shannie Alvarez 