Faith Filled Friday

Hey folks... how everyone doing this week? Great I hope. 

This time around I wanted to talk about something I have come to call invisible bullets. I think in today's world we are a type of people that have become more and more judgmental of others and the ways in which they live. We take pens to paper, fingers to keyboards, emotions from within where we pull them pull them back out and express in ways that perhaps we shouldn't. These expressions can often fall under fire where people then do the same...all this hate and anger running free in the world. It is incredibly overwhelming and sad. It's all bullets to me. People don't have to pick up a firearm to hurt and harm one another for sometimes our voices are the biggest guns of all. They can drop bombs all over another person. What's even sadder is that they are often oblivious to these invisible bullets and bombs. 

I can never understand why, when it feels so good to connect with people on things that we both share a passion for, why we can't do it more often? Where is the benefit of the doubt these days? Where is the love in just trying to get along? Why so much oblivious nature when these bullets start flying? I have come to believe that people don't want to feel vulnerable in body, situation or opinion. They want to secure the borders within and anyone outside the scope of that is perceived as a possible threat. 

Do we as a people really want to live that way? I surely don't. If people want to constantly find the bad things in you and call you pathetic, there is nothing you can do about it. We must seek to connect those dots with those who represent love to us and we must throw out a lifeline of our own understanding of people that differ from us. I have always found it difficult to pray for those who hurt me violently, who hurt me emotionally. The older I get the more I find that Jesus taking to prayer when He was tortured and led to a hill where He surely knew what was coming, and still He made the climb, filled with love for those who spit upon Him with their hatred. How horribly hard that must have been and yet completely natural for God's son to do such a thing. 

How blessed are we to have had love like that along the path of mankind's existence. One of my most constant prayers is for God to fill me with love and understanding... My new prayer this last year has been to also identify and pray for those who hurt others, and that includes myself. I don't want to carry hate. I want to talk to those who have hurt me and tell them what they did to me. If they care not to listen or hear that conversation then I have to leave it with God.  

Isn't it amazing that we can leave these things in God's care? That He can help alleviate the wounds we have suffered not only from others but from our own choices and fault. Let's put down the way of hurting one another and be filled with the light of love. It's what God wants and surely intended for every single one of us. I would love to see more of that go viral in the world, wouldn't you? 

Much love & God bless everyone...

John