1 John 4:20-21
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
I’ve been working on old family history lately, and this weekend, I’ve been digitizing cassette tape recordings, including an “interview” I conducted with my paternal grandparents in 1982, a few days after their 50th wedding anniversary. In the interview, I asked my grandmother Polly to repeat a story her older sister, Bessie, had told me several years earlier about five siblings who died…most of them before my grandmother was ever born. In all, there were ten children born to my great-grandparents…and six of them would not live to have families of their own.
The circumstances were varied, but all tragic…an 18-month-old toddler who contracted pneumonia…a one-year-old baby who developed blood poisoning…another one-year-old whose cause of death my grandmother could not recall…and an 11-year-old girl who got too close to the wood stove and caught her clothes on fire – and died from her burns. Then there was a baby brother who died at one month of age. My great-grandmother was sick with pneumonia and unable to attend the funeral. My then six year-old grandmother remembers an aunt riding in a wagon to the cemetery while carrying the baby in a small wooden casket on her lap.
After all of these sad events, my grandmother’s father left the family several years later and started a new life in a new state. My grandmother, her older brother and younger sister had to help their mother with farming chores and other work to support their family. My grandmother has said before, “We had a good life until Poppa left…and then we went to work.” Ultimately, they lived with family members and worked to earn their keep doing chores like carrying wood, gardening, tending livestock, and picking crops. And when my grandmother was 18, her brother was involved in a fatal car wreck and died at age 23, leaving her and her little sister to look after my great-grandmother.
When my own father was about 10 years old, my great-grandfather came for a visit. My grandmother said he wanted to act as if nothing had ever happened. She couldn’t do this. They snapped a few photos together, but there was no real reconciliation. In my childhood, very little was ever said about Grandpa – and what was said had a tinge of bitterness to it. But both my grandmother and her little sister began to talk about their poppa to me in their last years. I heard pain in their voices – and even some anger – but never hate. They never stopped loving him, even though he apparently gave them plenty of reasons to harbor ill will.
In the same way, my grandmother and her sister never expressed animosity toward the family members who took them in and gave them work – or resentment that my great-grandmother became “sickly” and unable to do much work herself. They always spoke of Grandma with tremendous respect and reverence…and often mentioned her unwavering Christian faith. I have thought a lot about this woman in recent days…how 72 years filled with heartaches and struggles surely took a toll on her. From what I have discerned, her adult life was filled with struggles, tragedies and challenges. Yet her faith remained unmovable, as did the faith of my grandmother and great-aunts.
Every one of us has experiences that have at least had the potential to leave us bitter and angry…if not filled with downright hatred. We are all sinful people in some way…and some of us are downright evil. I have a hard time comprehending that a murderous terrorist could confess his/her sins to Jesus and dwell in Heaven for all Eternity…but we all know the story of the thief on the cross beside Jesus. I struggle to accept that someone who lies and cheats to serve his/her own interests – and the end result could be the livelihood, or very lives of others – could repent and receive Salvation and the promise of Eternal Life. Still, I know this is what Christ offers to any who embrace Him.
I am human. I struggle to love the unlovely – those who lie, cheat, steal, abuse others, and operate in hatred and violence. I have a hard time accepting that God loves them as much as He loves me. But I know this to be true. I trust the word of God, and I respect the commands and teachings of Jesus. So I know that I must find a way to love others…all of them. I have had good role models within my own family who paved the way and showed me how to love against all odds. I am betting that you have some in your “line” as well. Above all, we have Jesus…and His command was indeed blunt. Loving Him includes loving others…and we simply must learn to do both.
©2021 Debbie Robus
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