Love them all!

My senses were overwhelmed by the pungent odor surrounding the man standing in the hallway outside of my office. My eyes took note of the advanced state of decay of his teeth and his very dirty clothing. The inclination was to dismiss him as yet another beggar stopping by for a hand-out, to see him as a failed human being. It's so much easier to deal with human need by judging someone as 'lazy and therefore deserving of their situation,' than it is to love him and be drawn into his crisis. But, who am I to look down on this man? Do I know how or why he came to this state? Can I so quickly assume that it is just a flawed character or failure to make good choices? That may well be true. It might also be that he suffers from mental illness; that he was abused terribly as a child and is deeply emotionally scarred; that some life trauma left him unable to cope with life; or ....

Yes, life is far too complex to understand another human being in 30 seconds!

God judges and asks me to love! He alone sees the full context of another's life. I see but a small window of time. That is why Jesus says, "Don’t condemn others, and God won’t condemn you. God will be as hard on you as you are on others! He will treat you exactly as you treat them. You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. How can you say, "My friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you don’t see the log in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:1-4, CEV) There are days when I fail miserably, when I am short-tempered, full of Self, in the grip of my sinful nature! But those days have a context within my whole life. Sometimes they come when I am weary from the struggle or overwhelmed with responsibilities. God does not suspend His expectations of me when life is hard, but neither does He dismiss me as a failure on the bad days! The Bible teaches me that He comes to me in those moments as my Comforter, my Advocate; Who "helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." (Romans 8:26, NIV)

Pray for grace to love them all;
the good, the bad;
the whole, the broken;
the clean, the dirty;
the together, the fragmented;
the beautiful, the marred.

It's costly to love those in need. Love will not allow us to turn from them or to blame them for their plight! Love will engage, hope, invest, and redeem. That's what love did for me. I am a debtor to grace, with no reason for pride! Here's a word from the Word. May it help us to love them all! "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:7-11, NIV)
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I was sinking deep in sin,
Far from the peaceful shore,
Very deeply stained within,
Sinking to rise no more.
But the Master of the sea
Heard my despairing cry,
From the waters lifted me;
Now safe am I.

Love lifted me!
Love lifted me!
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me.
Love lifted me.

Souls in danger, look above;
Jesus completely saves.
He will lift you by His love
Out of the angry waves.
He's the Master of the sea,
Billows His will obey.
He your Savior wants to be,
Be saved today.

Love Lifted Me
Howard E. Smith © Public Domain