Love Is the Light of the World, So Allow Love to Open the Door to 2011

"Love one another as I have loved you."
Jesus Christ, Gospel of John

In these last few days of 2010, many of us will be thinking in terms of New Year’s resolutions. I urge everyone to think in terms of love. Love is the Light of the World because Love is God. God is Love. And only Love can eradicate hatred from the one world we all live in. 

Jesus Christ gave us two commandments: Love your God and love your neighbor as you love yourself. These two commandments are easily summed-up in one word: Love. We, ourselves, are the embodiment of love, and yet we are so drawn to clothing our hearts with hatred. We wear hatred like a cloak of protection. It's our feeble way of keeping anything we don't understand at bay. We don't understand people of a different color, or creed or sexual orientation or nationality and so we shroud ourselves in our cloaks of fear and hatred. We harbor evil thoughts toward these "different" people. Sometimes we vocalize our evil thoughts to family and friends, and sometimes we go as far as mistreating the "different" people we've grown to hate. At the same time, we attend church every Sunday and consider ourselves to be justified, good people in the eyes of God. We need to stop fooling ourselves.

No one who harbors hatred in their heart toward others is justified in the eyes of God. It makes no difference how often we may attend church, or how much we have helped the poor, or how much money we have given to charities. No amount of doing can justify a heart shrouded in hatred. No one is required to hate. We choose to hate and we can also choose not to hate. We can choose to challenge each and every hateful thought that enters our minds, and we can choose to challenge each and every hateful feeling that entraps our hearts. 

2011 offers us a great opportunity to take-up this God-based challenge. The challenge started with Jesus and we are called to bring it to fruition. If someone has hurt us, we are called to forgive them. Maybe, for example, someone of a different color stole our credit card information off the internet, and we chose to believe that everyone of that race is evil. We need to reexamine our thinking. An entire race cannot be legitimately blamed for the misdeeds of one of their members. Instead of hating the person who stole from us-- and hating his or her race-- we need to forgive them, bless them and release our need to be justified by hatred. We can only be justified by love, and love sees beyond the mask of human behavior. People often do hurtful things because they are desperate, or hurting themselves in ways we can never know or understand. Compassion and empathy are tools that lead us to forgiveness. They are the tools of love that lift the cloak of hatred from our hearts by helping us to see our own brokenness in those we have chosen to hate. These tools lead us to mercy and forgiveness and then love allows us to bless those who have hurt us.

We've all heard of the story "The House Without a Christmas Tree." How about we make 2011 the year for our own personal, redemptive story: "The Heart Without Hatred." Or, on a more positive note, "The Heart That Harbored Love of God, Neighbor and Self." Let's take the words of Jesus Christ seriously. We are called to continue the mission of Christ to be Light for the world, and only Love can spread that Light to all corners of our one world. Be that Light and allow your soul to shine!

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