Honest- My heart just about broke in two last night over the chicken debacle.
I sat in a bowling alley parking lot waiting for my girls and their friends with tears dripping down my face, reading all the reactions, debate and hurt from every side of this issue. Because the truth is, in the millions of opinions voiced over the last week and yesterday, there is a face and a heart behind each one. Millions of souls...
And
We all trampled each other yesterday.
Trying to prove the rightness of our individual opinions. We had facts and figures on every side of the debate, statistics to shore up our loudly proclaimed STANCES. Affection for our individual agendas oozed from our facebook posts, pictures and article links.
But we didn't have love. Or true respect for one another. Even if our voices were soft as we detailed our personal viewpoints...as I tried to do yesterday...we still alienated people. If we are guilty of doing this under the guise of defending GOD, then how we stink of religiosity. I think Jesus would have been on the side of love yesterday. Sadly, that wasn't one of the options we allowed ourselves, was it?
"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
(I Corinthians 13, The Message Version)
I know this post probably isn't going to be very popular. But this is my heart today...the day after...and I say this with shame and humility and hope:
I need to learn to love like God does. And yesterday wasn't it.
Peace, dear readers.
*For the record, our family did not go to ChicFilA yesterday. But I still spoke about the issue on facebook and hurt at least one friend in the process. I am so very sorry for that.
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