love

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I found this picture the other day and it really made me think...  In the Bible it says to love your neighbor as yourself but so often that is not the case.  The atrocities that happen everyday, the things that humans do to other humans in the name of this cause or that or simply because they are different.  Where is the love there?  Where is the love when a husband beats his wife and children?  Where is it when kids at school are bullied and ostracized?   Where is it when one country declares war on another and the young people of both nations go out to kill each other?  Where is it when a child is sold into prostitution and slavery?  How can we be the people that do these things and at the same time people who will gently rock a child to sleep or tenderly hug a grandmother?   How can the same hand that is raised in anger one moment reach out in a caress the next?  How can any of this be?
I believe that I serve a God of love.  That He created us and that He loves each and every one of us so much more than we could ever imagine.  You might expect me to say now 'How can such  a loving God exist in a world with so much hate?'  Or,  'How can a God of love let the hate happen?' But that is not my question.  I want to know how such a God can keep loving us when every time we hurt another we are hurting Him.  How much must it hurt to know that your children are tearing each other apart?  That these people that you made and love hate each other that much?  That is my question.

I went to a retreat when I was about 13 and the speaker there said that love is not a feeling it is a choice.  You may have an initial attraction but the thing that we call love, that will get you through however many years by that persons side is a choice... A choice to say 'I love you even though you just crashed my car, I love you even though you have things about you that I don't like'.  The speaker was talking about romantic love, but I think that the idea encompasses every kind of love...  I think that it really is a choice that we have to make, to love the people around us, because it is easier to hate than to love, and it is easier by far to just be indifferent.