We live in a country with many freedoms. These freedoms allow us to make many choices in life. The ability to choose is a wonderful thing to have. However, we don’t have unlimited freedom, especially when a choice we make affects the freedom of another person. The choices we make shape the world around us.
Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” He didn’t say I give you a new suggestion or that you will be happier if you do this. He said, “I give you a new commandment.” Loving one another is very hard to do all the time, but doing so is essential if we want the world to be able to live together in harmony.
Whenever someone talks about what to wish for, usually world peace comes up. Well, if everyone loved one another, we would have world peace. When countries get greedy and choose their needs above the needs of other countries and the rest of the world, we have violence and war. Just look at the situation between Russia and Ukraine. Russia was doing just fine and could have focused on making life better for it’s citizens, but instead it got greedy and chose to invade the country of Ukraine. Now, over 25,000 people are dead and over 12 million Ukrainian people are displaced from their homes. Choices can have dire consequences.
The slogan we have heard a lot of recently is, “My body, my choice.” Currently, an unborn child doesn’t really have any rights legally, and so the choice made by many mothers has ended the lives of over 600,000 babies each year in the U.S. alone. As a perspective, COVID 19 has killed around 1,000,000 people in the U.S. in the last two years. There is no flattening the curve of abortion. Now, there are many reasons why someone might want to terminate a pregnancy, but none of them justify killing another human and denying them a chance to choose to live. Jesus had a body and a choice and He laid down His life so that we may live. Jesus says, “As I have loved you, so you should love one another.” If Jesus was willing to die in order to save us, humanity should be willing to go through the pain and discomfort of pregnancy in order to save children’s lives. We would all be spiritually dead if Jesus would have said, “my body, my choice.”
There is also a lot of hate in the world towards various groups of people who are different than us. Jesus never said to love only those who are easy to love. There are many people who are difficult to love, but we still should choose to try find the good in them. Are we going through life with the belief that everyone else is an obstacle to our own happiness? I sometimes find it hard to love my neighbor when I am driving on I-4 in Central Florida, but I need to choose to see the person in the car instead of just a car that is an obstacle to where I want to go. Would we be as upset if our Grandma was going 55 mph in the fast lane or if our Mom cut us off in traffic? Don’t look at people as obstacles, but as partners in life. We should choose to help out each other instead of trying to top one another. We won’t be judged on how many people we get ahead of in life, but by how many people we bring along with us. Loving someone else is definitely not always easy, but it’s a great choice.
