Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
“God is love!” The same people that shout Gods love will be quick to spread human hate. Are we a people that have given up on trying to love? If we truly believe that God is love would we not want to share that with someone, would we not want to be that for someone? Yet, minute by minute we make sure that anyone who we think might be better than us gets showered with hate in an attempt to humble them before us as if we are God and we are in control.
Do we not care anymore? Do people's feelings not matter? Are we numb to the effect of a few simple words or actions? Or, is it that we do not know what love is?
I remember what it was like to learn about the Holocaust for the first time. As a little boy, I was never able to fully grasp the power and the effect that the Holocaust had. How could a man rise to power and then create a culture of hate for a certain race? What Hitler did was no doubt immoral and wrong, yet he convinced an entire population that what he was doing was for the best. I have no doubt if I asked you, "what is one word to describe the Holocaust?", a common answer would be, "Horrible."
How then, do we describe horrible? How do we experience it, feel it, and know it? What is the limit to how bad something can be before we classify it as horrible?
No matter how we look at the Holocaust we will never fully understand how horrible it is because we can't experience it. I believe the same is true with love.
Love is something so pure and so divine that we can not experience it in its complete form. Think back to the Bible when Moses wanted to see God. God knew that if Moses saw him in his complete beauty that he would die. It was too much for an imperfect being to experience. Love is the same way. We are incapable of knowing the meaning and knowing what true love is.
I say all of this to ask a question, do we come into certain situations and assume that we understand things even when we don't? Do we assume that we can understand the way people feel, the sadness, the joy, the pain, the relief, do we think that we are capable of understanding things the way others understand them?
As you go through life, take things a little slower, listen a little more and talk a little less. Maybe, along the way, we will learn to understand others in a deeper way.
