The easiest of answers is often the result of the toughest decision. I could stop there with that wonderful sentence that I crafted in seconds. That would be too easy though. It's like saying that he sky is blue or that water is wet. Without the rest of the picture, the easy statement is well....to easy and incomplete. Don't get me wrong, some things are meant to be easy while others require the more difficult of elements. It's easy for me to tell my kids I love them. Most of us do this daily and really mean it. Then we add the element of doing wrong. Yes, I still love you but I don't love what you did or were doing. See the difference? With little more than a few words easy becomes entangled like morning hair. Okay, I love my kids and will always love my kids. That is a good statement. It's an imitation though. God says, "I love my kids and will always love my kids." He too doesn't love what we do but remains in love with us. How can this be?
Potential. That's the simple and easy answer. However, what we see as potential and what our kids see as potential (use the same statement for God) can be worlds apart. Life is supposed to enlighten us as well as our kids to how much potential we have thus allowing others to see who we truly are. Then include that into loving us and us loving our kids. God sees the potential in all of us. When? Before you were born. The Bible says that he knew us before we were conceived in our mother's womb and that it was He who knit us together and set before us all the days of our life. God is pretty good at seeing potential in us when we don't. So where does this standard for potential come from and how does it work? Does the standard change for different people, different ages, different capacities? Yes and no are the simple answers. God only sees the standard as being for everyone. We see and set different standards for individuals, groups, and ourselves. We really are a messed up creation when you get down to the nitty gritty.
The standard can be set based on just two commands that God has given us. First he has commanded us to love Him with all our heart, soul and life. Second he has commanded us to love our others as He has loved us. Hmmm....sounds like a difficult dilemma coming up. You would be right. This is problematic as we find ourselves loving God as we want and loving only those people we want to love. Then our love, in both cases, is less than the word was intended by God. Can we really do justice to God's love for mankind? No, we cannot. Can we really give God's love for others to them of and by ourselves? Nope, we cannot. Like I started with, the easy answer isn't always easy. Two errors pop up. The first is trying to know what God exhibits as love. We often "love" as we feel we want to. Rarely do people love with the love of God. Second we then turn around and love others with "our" love which is again less than God intended.
So, what to do? Seeing ourselves as God sees us is the first step. God sees us as worth while. He, in turn, asks us to see ourselves as worth while. When we reach that point we can see others as being worth while. Sounds like what God does for us. Like a relay switch, as soon as the switch is flipped and we understand God, we can pass that understanding onto others. This applies to our enemies as well. Hmmm...didn't see that one coming; did you. Neither did I. So, whom are we going to choose to love today? The easy answer is the one you despise the most. Yourself. Didn't see that one coming either did you? You see, our feelings towards what God created in us should mimic what God created in others. We are only able to give others the worth that we accept from God. If we see ourselves with great self worth (yes), then we are able o see others as having great worth. If we are able to receive the love of God at whatever level, we are only able to love to the level we have received the love of God.
The easy answer isn't always easy. Do it anyway.
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