LOVE: The One Thread Interwoven in All Faiths

When you wear your faith on your sleeve, you are a sitting duck for persecution. As long as you leave your religious beliefs out of the equation, you can prolly skate through this world blending in.

Don’t think persecutions are limited to any one faith. In my recent search, it became very clear that each of the faiths, rooted in a spirit of love, had horrific accounts of how they were assaulted just for what they believed.

As I ended the series of posts on Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, a thought resonated in my spirit of what Jesus said the single greatest thing a person could do is: Love one another, as He so loved… (John 13:34).

I thought how when He walked the earth, He didn’t pack a Bible to thump over the heads to make people believe. He spoke in parables for the most part. No, Jesus lived His walk of faith; and at the end of the day, He left that one Commandment to replace all others.

It sums up as the Golden Rule: Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.

Recently, I listened to the memorial service for the fallen Muslims in New Zealand. A man who lost several relatives, in love, expressed his choice to not fuel the fire of hatred for the person who killed his family members. I thought to myself how a response such as that had to come from a higher place in the spirit than that of the human perspective, which in all humanness would want to lash out.

As a final post in this series, I pondered: What if everyone stripped their religious labels, and walked in the Spirit as God would have them to, how LOVE would be the order of the day.

I am compelled to end this post with a bit of disclosure: Through the years, I have been blessed with friends of many faiths. I have friends who are agnostics, and atheists.

I have observed enough of life to know that all wearing the Christian label are not heaven bound; and furthermore, many are Sunday Christians, aka, extremely carnal the other six days of the week. Proportionally, I'd go out on a limb and say that a very rare few of the 2.19 billion are really walking the walk, talking the talk as a lifestyle.

I was blessed with relief long ago, that it is not my place to make people be who God wants them to be. It is just for me to love them unconditionally, acceptant of their place in life and trust God to work out all the details.

It is for me to speak the truth in love to them as the Spirit leads. But, what I find most commonly is that all Jesus requires of me is that:

• I love them for who God created them,

• Pray mercy and grace for them, as I’d hope they’d pray for me; and

• Know that at the end of the day we each traveled the journey purely in the graces of God; no one better/more worthy than the next.

Best regards.

Peace.