Love, Start With Me

I don’t watch the news. It’s too much. But there are times when you just can’t escape it.
Another cop gunning down another unarmed black man in the back.
Another officer down.
Another massacre of students.
Another air-strike against a terrorist stronghold.
Another plane down.
And then there’s all the noise because some people don’t want to bake cakes or make pizzas for some other people’s sacred day. (Why don’t Christians make this much noise over the matters of death and life that we are drowning in here?)

Again. And again. And again.

Didn’t we hear this news last week?
Last year?
Wasn’t this the story before I was born?

Hate is a disease. A disease that is not cured by guns or bombs or legislation. A disease that is especially dangerous when you don’t even know that you have it.

What kind of hell is a person living in when it is nothing to snuff out the life of a fellow person? When the only life that matters is your own?

As long as there are “They,” “Those people,” “Them,” and “Not Us,” this crazy terror-go-round will not stop.

Hate draws the circle close–keeping “those people” out.

Love–that crazy, breathtaking, world-changing, senseless love of God–opens us up, breaks our hearts wide open until we are all “Us.” Until your people are my people.  Until we are just people.

Oh Love, start with me please.