Only Love

Moses said to the people: “You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own.” Deuteronomy 7:6

Moses went on to explain, “It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations.” We are loved by the same big God with the same big love! He chose us not because we are smart, beautiful, important, or even good. We are sacred to Him, set apart, to be peculiarly His own. He set His heart on us. 

He already knew when He set our heart on us, that we would break it. He had a plan for His special, wayward people. He would send His Son, His only beloved Son, to be mangled and torn, by the same people He loved. How is this possible, we ask? 

In 2006, a terrible tragedy occurred in a small Amish schoolroom. Charles Carl Roberts turned his gun on a class of young girls and killed five of them, and injuring five others. Then he killed himself. In his suicide note, he confessed that he hated God. The response of the Amish community was amazing. After they took care of poignantly burying  their own daughters the day before, thirty of them were present at Charles Carl Roberts funeral. They embraced the widow and other members of Roberts’ family. They even helped the widow with her expenses for the funeral. 

Martin Luther King’s famous quote comes to mind, “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” As children of our Father in heaven, we have to learn this and live this. To repay hatred, bigotry, selfishness, anger, even murder, with acts and voices of love.