Love past the difference

      I'm sitting here tonight feeling just a wee bit sad I had a moment this week when I thought to myself "ooh I should write about that this week..." and now I'm trying to remember. Oh wait, I remember. This week I had the realize that we can be at war with people or we can love people. We may hear around us that being angry is our due, that when we are angry it is being "real" to share that emotion with everyone. Satan will tell us that if we don't share our anger that people won't know to do that again (yes I have actually heard this whispered in my ear this week). We live in a world that teaches us to give vent to our spleen (otherwise known as rage) and not to leave it bottled up inside us. While it is true that keeping that inside isn't healthy and isn't a good idea, I can tell you that venting it at people really doesn't get us anywhere either. Really being angry at other human beings hurts us because not only do we deal with our anger, we also deal with our remorse and sheepishness when we realize how much we have hurt the other person. As a final nail in the coffin of this lie, we've all gotten angry at someone only to be attacked back as the other person becomes defensive. There is a better answer...



    This better answer is love. Now this may seem like a very cliche answer and maybe even a bit empty for some of us. We bandy about the word love quite often and I think sometimes we miss or misunderstand what love is. I would invite you to think about a time in which you felt no judgement, no aggression, no attack. Think about a time when you felt like someone saw you for who you really are and appreciated you for who you are, looking past the imperfections, the impatience, the shortcomings and mistakes and you felt their unconditional love. I want you to reside in that memory for a moment and think about how you felt. I know in that moment I felt like I could change the world, that who I was was enough, I didn't have to try to be anyone else, I didn't have to try to be something I wasn't, I didn't have to fake it because who I was in that moment had made it. Now just think for a minute what could happen if you chose to see others like that all the time, if you could see them as the Savior sees them. The Savior that saw everyone of our lives, who knows how we tick, who has seen all the aspects of our lives that made us who we are. What if we loved that person who we feel like just doesn't get us and never will, the person who it sure feels like won't ever change and doesn't want us to understand them.
   Satan will whisper little lies about that person, little lies that slowly build until another person's character has totally warped and we can't see them for the child of God that they are. I would encourage you to call Satan's bluff, to look really look at the person, when we have those negative thoughts we generally try to push them to the side because we don't want to be rude, what if we really looked at them, wrote them down, saw them for what they were (lies from an outside source) then tore them up and threw them away. Then we could see the person beneath all the lies and get rid of the ultimatum mentality that if they don't change it's not worth it. Because it is worth it, once we get ride of the lies, then we can invite the Spirit to teach us to see with Christ's eyes, I promise that as you ask, He will help you.
    I also promise that as you begin to see others as Christ sees them, He can show you how He feels about you. Once the hate, anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness leave then there is room for greater perspective, there is room for kindness, there is room for love and there is the eyes' of Christ.
   I'm not saying I'm perfect at this, in fact I gained some additional insights as I wrote this, yet I do know that loving brings me and the other person closer to my Savior. Imagine for just a moment a wedge (like one used for cutting wood) at the top of every person's head and for every negative thought we send their way that wedge goes a bit deeper into them. I realize that current thought that it's only bad if it is coming out of our mouth (and that is bad), but think about how you feel when you dwell on those thoughts, eventually it eats away at you and I would posit it eats away at your relationship with that person and hurts that person. If you have ever heard of the rice experiment, then think of what happens when you label a person and have negative thoughts about them. So ask the Savior for His help to change those labels, to recognize the thoughts for where they came from and to ask to love. Imagine what could happen when we choose to love, when we choose to hope for the best for others, even those who seem so different then ourselves.
    As I was reminded of this week we aren't waiting for Zion to magically appear, we must create it in our lives, we must build it in preparation for the Second Coming of our Savior. I wonder if learning to love is the first step in having a people of one heart and one mind. One heart and one mind doesn't mean we'll always agree or there will always be unanimity, but I think it means that we choose to love past the difference, that we see others for who they are and we learn to just let things go. I hope to do better at this this week and I am excited to see how the Lord works in my mind and heart this week.