All you need is Love

God is Love.  Love is not just something God does, it is what He IS.  Without one there is no other.  So not only are we expected to love God, we are also expected to love other people.  If we choose not to love other people, we are basically being ungodly because God is Love.  In other words, we live for everyone around us and not just for ourselves.  Life is not something to go through with blinders on.

If someone is trying to talk to you about something that weighs heavily on their mind, try to put yourself in their place and show some compassion rather than just objectively taking an outside-looking-in perspective.  We are people in need of healing, not problems to be solved.  All too often, friends and family fail miserably in this regard because they just want to take care of business.  Or, what they hear sounds unfamiliar to them so they shoot it down to prevent their own selfish know-it-all ego from suffering.  So they let a loved one suffer instead.  Preventing your own petty "suffering" at someone else's expense is not Love.  That is why it is so important to learn how to really love before getting deep into a close friendship or starting a family.  Otherwise, you're just dead weight, doing more harm than good.

Oh, and if you're just a passing acquaintance trying to give unsolicited life advice to someone by first asking nosy, rude, and invasive personal questions - DON'T!  Trying to push your own agenda by alienating and antagonizing the other person is not loving your neighbor by any stretch of the imagination.  Jesus said to love your neighbor, not put down, diminish, degrade, trivialize, discourage your neighbor or strip him or her of his or her dignity.  Disrespect is not love.  If you're close to someone and you get it wrong, try again.  But if you're just a passing acquaintance with an agenda and an oversized ego, don't even bother trying.  You'll get it wrong every time because you are incapable of loving someone that you never bothered actually getting to know first.  Asking nosy, rude, and invasive personal questions does not constitute getting to know someone.  That's all I have for today.

Mark 12: 28-34