"Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." Isaiah 28:10
"Precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." Isaiah 28:10
I had an idea about “loving our neighbour as ourselves.” I have thought about the “as ourselves” part to mean, BEING YOURSELF. So by being yourself – who God makes you to be – you can love others naturally. I think it is like being a true witness to your own identity and another’s.
This relates to a situation I had at work recently. The person I work for has a number of habits, perpetual complaining, social insecurities, constant fear of sickness, etc etc. Eventually I avoided asking “How are you?” because her answer was always much longer and sadder than I wanted to hear! Our conversations were becoming more and more annoying to me, week after week. I was sort of stuck on this “false witness” track and found it more and more difficult to love her...and I wasn’t feeling at all like myself at work.
I went from trying to convince myself, “You have to love her, you have to love her” to just considering what it meant to BE MYSELF. I started to focus more on the qualities God gives me, like joy, understanding, and humility, rather than on the deficiencies I was perceiving in her. Then, very naturally, I felt full of love.
One evening we had a potluck party with all of my colleagues and I sensed a complete change in my interaction with this person. Since then, I have sincerely enjoyed talking with, and also joking around with, this person. She still does the things that bothered me before, but it only seems to trigger off more love! And I don’t feel the slightest bit disturbed. My boss even said to me recently that she appreciates how we’ve become good friends through our work together, and I thoroughly agree! I attribute this to the fact that I have seen that the source of love is God, therefore there’s PLENTY OF IT!