One of the great pointers to the majesty of God, and our total dependence on Him, is the nature of His love. It is of an entirely different order to our own love. We will never be fulfilled until we fully accept and bask in that great love.
“But I say this to you: love your enemies!”
Such a teaching goes against the grain.
Sorry Jesus, but you ask too much;
Loving our own brings sufficient pain.
Human love rarely ventures beyond
The familiar – family and friends.
We peer out from the corral of kin;
That’s usually where our love ends.
The spouse of a work colleague dies:
We make time to attend the funeral.
But our heart doesn’t feel their pain –
We never really knew them after all.
Tragedies occur in far away lands:
Earthquakes, famines, cruel wars.
Our world doesn’t really fall apart;
We’re not responsible for foreign flaws.
Human love is conditional, and
Its scope is typically exclusive.
God’s love is given without strings;
Catholic in scope, wholly inclusive.
If you draw breath, then know that
You are loved to the fullest degree;
Our God doesn’t do half measures;
Loved – then, now, for all eternity.
All are precious to this great Heart:
You, me, friend, stranger, foe.
To feel such love is to understand
Why the corral mentality has to go.
Racism, bigotry, cliques and castes,
Are subversions of love’s blueprint.
Born of fear and reared in malice,
They deny humanity’s blest imprint.
To love one’s own folk is no big deal,
Worse still, many wrongs can be justified:
Be it ‘room for living’, ‘final solution’;
Outsiders’ rights too easily brushed aside.
At our life’s end God will ask of us
How we loved beyond our corrals:
Did we share our love with all men,
Or just with those within the walls?