"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." - John 15:12
We've all heard people say it and it would be a lie to say we ourselves have not uttered the words "if they are going to be that way then so am I." I'm guilty of losing my temper and wanting to retaliate against someone I believe to have wronged me. I'm guilty of forgetting the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Maybe that is what's wrong with our society. Maybe that is why this great country and this world has come to the state it is now in.
We want retaliation for the wrongs done to us. In this country, in this world, we have forgotten why we must love one another. We have forgotten why it is so important to see people with our hearts instead of looking at them simply with our eyes. When we look at people with our eyes, instead of with our hearts, we see them from the outside. We forget to see them for the person they truly are.
This summer I spent three weeks with people who reminded me that we must love and look at people with our hearts and an open mind. Camp SMILE, set on the grounds of Camp Grace in West Mobile, is a summer camp for people with special needs. Ages range from four to adult, each week focusing on a different age group. Camp SMILE is a very unique camp where people are seen for who they are and what they are capable of, not their disabilities. By the end of the third week I was here, I was almost in tears at how blessed I was to be placed somewhere that brought me back to what it means to love.
We are placed on this world to bring love to the people we encounter, to show them the love that God has shown to us. We are not here to cast judgement and shun people for their race, religion or sexual preferences. Whether we agree with what someone believes or not, we weren't put here to be intolerant. Unfortunately, that is what we have grown to become. We no longer love without abandon and see the world through our hearts, the way God sees us. Recent events have put this all in perspective: the Orlando shooting, the deaths of the Dallas police officers, the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, among other terrible events around the country and around the world.
It's time for us to make a change, in our hearts and in our minds. It's time to go back to seeing people as God sees them, a creation made in His image. We all have faults and imperfections, but we are all here to love and to see people for who they are and who they can be. It's time to love without abandon.
