Pondering love and hate a lot recently, I'm convinced that the love of the true God is what we need. Our own human love will always fall short, and is terribly persuadable. Our human "love" isn't pure love, though we wish it to be. Abiding in Jesus, who came showing us the heart, and true love of the Father, and letting the Holy Spirit shed that love abroad in our hearts is, in my opinion, the only hope I -or any of us- have. Otherwise, we end up hating "evil," which can sometimes look like what happened when they crucified our LORD. There is an enemy mode we can slip into, feeling justified that we are correct and "in the right." The sermon on the mount spoken to those 12 men sheds light on what the Father thinks love is...and to be honest I think it offends all of us in some way, deeply down to our human core. The idea of giving empathy without also having justice is anathema to the God of creation. There must be both. We're to love one of those, and do the other. If we only focus on one (love or justice), we take up weapons with the one who came to steal, kill, and destroy ~ without realizing it. We are told to do justice and love mercy. The balance needed seems to only be available via supernatural Divine empowerment. Being able to receive His love might be a problem for a lot more of us than we'd like to think, because it's perfectly mingled with justice. Some of us tend to love one, or the other, but few seem to grasp both unless they are surrendered to the One rather than being dogmatic about their "ways" being right. Do we follow Him, or our ideas of Him? Do we adore Him and His ways, or do we privately, and very deeply prefer concepts of our own beliefs of what we feel or think He means/meant rather than He Himself? I think He stands in the perfect middle between justice and mercy, and invites us to both within Himself. It means we cannot pick a side, and still be in the right. This, methinks, is the stuff of wonder, and perplexing, and beautiful, and mysterious.
