What World Do You Live In?

Last week I needed a personal recommendation. I posted on my local Nextdoor app and asked my neighbors and neighborhoods who they recommended. Surprisedly, it turned into a contest. Each person wanted to say who they recommended and why and the 50 something comments I received were full of praises and love. Until….

Until that one person, you know the one, got on and complained about some of the recommendations and was mad because nothing had worked out for her so she didn’t give me a recommendation. She just came on to vent and shoot others down. I did not say anything back to her. I just thought “Wow! you live in a hostile world”

And that’s the question, what world are you living in? I believe a lot of folks live in a hostile world. I can see it on their social media posts. They are mad about everything. Mad about the war in Ukraine, mad about the results of the pandemic, mad because their team lost, mad about something that happened last year, last week, or yesterday. They embrace hostility!

Embracing hostility will never bring love. If you want to live in love and you want to be loved then you must first love yourself and stop being mad and hostile over your pain. Pain is part of the process. It has existed since day one. It was painful coming out of the womb. Someone grabbed you with some salad spoons and pulled you by the head or they jerked you out after cutting on your mother. Either way, you were not happy when you came out. It was painful and you were hostile but are you still mad about it?

No! We let it go because we cannot change it. We are here now and there’s nothing we can do about it so we have let it go. We need to let all of our pain go just like our birth that we were unhappy about during the process, we have moved on from that. If we could only move on with everything painful in life. If only we could see that it was love that brought us into this world not hostility then maybe we could recognize that hostility has no place in us only love and choose to live in a world of love.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
Ephesians 4:9