Love should make it Possible

I sat on the beach having a hearty chat with this friend of mine. We talked about work, about the challenges we faced each day, about our weaknesses and our desire to be better people... The conversation was centered around God and how with Him in our lives everything is so different.

She brought out an interesting point - If we love God, she said it must be so easy to do the right things because our motivation would be love. Yet we seem to keep failing. People do the right thing when driven by the fear of consequences than for love!

Isn't that so true? Love should make it possible for us to be gentle, kind, gracious, non-judgemental, accepting, forgiving... and all those nice things! We would probably practice all these qualities at work where peoples opinions matter but not with the people we love.

Why? we asked ourselves. I have been thinking about it, and it seems to me that the reason could be that Love is not easy - Love involves giving ourselves freely to another. Love demands us to put our focus on another instead of ourselves. Love insists that we forgive even when we know we will be hurt again... It draws me to the conclusion that Love is only possible with God. And the more we know God the more we can Love.

Btw - This is my 200th post! :) Thank you to those of you who read and keep me writing!

Dear Mister God, this is @ina . . . Your love makes me sing!

Guilty as Charged

Hmmm.... I messed up. I made a mistake. This is not the first time I messed up. I have made the same mistake before and yet always found reasons to justify myself. Even now my mind can think of a hundred reasons why I did what I did but my heart knows that I was wrong. I let the battle rage in my mind, defending my actions and refusing to accept the simple fact that I was guilty! At the end of it all it was time to Surrender. I had to accept that I did not want to do what I did. I had to make up for the mistake that hurt a friend. I had to say I was sorry. I had to think of the *real* reason I did what I did. I had to get to the root of my problem and ask God to help me deal with it.

Peace is mine again and this post is a gentle reminder to me, to keep my promise to be gracious in speech.

Dear Mister God, this is @ina . . . Guilty as charged I come to you humbly and ask for forgiveness and the grace to change.