Learning to Love Well

I turn 55 years old on Saturday. I learned about a personal relationship I could have with God when I was 10 years old and embraced that for myself, so that means I've been a follower of Christ for forty-five years. But I am FAR from where I know He would like me to be. I am still learning, and the more I grow and learn, the more I realize how far I am from the mark. I am still learning to love well.

Sunday morning, in the wee hours of party time, a man with evil in his heart went into a nightclub and killed 49 people, and injured many others. Since then, the interwebs have been full of expressions of love and concern, but also admonishment, blame, judgement and accusations.

"Christians, say something. Don't say nothing."

"Christians, don't say something now. It's disingenuous."

"Christians are full of hate towards the LGBTQ community."

"Christians love the LGBTQ community."

Golly, what is it? There is no formula to find the truth in all this; everyone has an opinion. We love to look like the good guy out there in cyber space and make everyone else look like they are not doing it right. Facebook is my social media platform of choice, but I almost cannot stand it any longer. (As a matter of fact, I 'unfriended' 650 of my 700 friends recently, just to simplify my life. Hopefully most of those 650 people are still my real friends, though.) I have seen all of this kind of conflicting and divisive commentary on FB since Sunday. My husband doesn't have any social media accounts; no Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat, etc. He is completely oblivious to the conflict that is raging particularly on Facebook right now (and at other times). Wouldn't it be nice to live in such oblivion? He is not responsible for any awareness of people being snarky and judgey with each other, simply because he does not participate in it.

Sometimes I want to move to the moon and escape it all.

In John 17, Jesus is praying for his disciples. He spends a fair amount of time asking God to help them be one, be in unity as he and the Father are in unity. This is such a strong indictment on the church currently...if there is one thing we are not, it is unified! The banter on social media and the accusations between Christians toward one another is appalling. It is the farthest thing from unity that could ever be. How grieved God must be when he looks at his church. I'm not sure what the solution is but I have to believe humility is a starting point.

What I do know, is that I have not learned all I need to know about loving well. Loving my family. Loving my neighbors and friends. Loving those who think differently than I do (and FB just illuminates this in. my. face. every single day and it's just gotten to be too much). Loving those who are different than I.

I'm venting today, because I want to just feel sad that so many souls passed into eternity too young, too soon, too early, but I feel like the world is telling me that I need to think about some other things, too. I just want to feel sad, not complicated.

So I did; I cried really hard today thinking about all that was lost. God help us.