My prayer is to love others well. Because most often in life, everything comes back to this one thing. Love.
John 13:35 says “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (KJV)”
And I thought deeply over the past several weeks about loving others well and concluded, in order to love others well, we must first be willing to die more to ourselves.
Because the challenge becomes, we can not prefer our brothers and sisters while at the same time preferring ourselves.
I found this prayer by Mother Teresa adapted from St Fancis which articulated my prayer and thoughts.
“Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them, through our hands, this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give peace and joy.”
It’s this part that gets me…
“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
That where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
That where there is doubt; I may bring faith;
That where there is despair, I may bring hope;
That where there are shadows, I may bring light;
That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord gran that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
To understand rather than to be understood;
To love rather than to be loved;
For it is by forgetting self that one finds;
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven;
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.” -Mother Teresa
You see loving others well takes the love of God.
It takes the grace of God.
The strength of God.
And the gift of God.
“Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
Romans 12:10 NIV
This is what it means to love others well.
It is the very heart of the matter.
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