the message and the man...

Okay, I have been a small group this year - and there is a quote and scripture out of what we studied that I have come back to often this past week.

"Keep struggling against hatred and resentment. At times you will have the upper hand, at times you will feel beaten down...Never stop trying to live the commandment of love and forgiveness. Do not dilute the strength of Jesus's message;...do not dismiss it as unreal and impractical. Do not cut it to your size...Keep it as it is, aspire to it, desire it, and work for it's achievement." --Naim Ateek

I think I have written before about love being a power - a power that most people don't see as a power. Love. Why can't it be seen as powerful? Power. I wonder what most people think of when they think of the word power.

Martin Luther King wrote "To our most bitter opponents we say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you."

That's good stuff!!!

2nd Corinthians 5:16-21 "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Where is God making his appeal through me today? Through you? He is asking me to listen...to not assume I know what I am doing. To listen and to love - and to allow love to be enough.