A Message
The following is a true story. I shall not divulge the names, the place or the time but it is the truth.
Once upon a time, I said what I considered to be a really harmless sentence. It was, instead, misunderstood or misrepresented and it became a very heated inflammatory statement which made someone in my circle of friends extremely angry. No, it was not about the usually contested subjects. This statement was about low calorie, low cholesterol food tasting good!
I apologized but that did not do any good. My friend decided to stop speaking to me and even worse she turned about a dozen other friends against me. I, in turn, became angry so I didn’t speak to her! The situation snow balled and became worse and worse until eventually it became a big deal. Now I didn’t even know what she was angry about. The whole thing took a ridiculously inflated personality. In truth, it was blown completely out of proportion!
I prayed that our friendship would be restored but it became worse rather than better. I tried everything I could think of but nothing seemed to help. The worst part of it seemed to me to be that there was no grounds for it. The cause of it was so miniscule that you couldn’t imagine anyone even having an opinion about it –even less about a person caring deeply about the subject!!!
One evening as I lay praying about my problem, I asked God to make me like my friend again and then in side of my head I heard the answer to my prayer:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE HER. YOU JUST HAVE TO LOVE HER.
We are not called to like everyone but we called to love everyone!
Sounds like God, doesn’t it?
Love,
Hope
I came to this knowledge in the same way. When we earnestly pray for someone, even someone we may not “like” we find that love for that person grows.