I’ve had a lot of stupid ideas in my life time. For example… The idea of a world full of me’s. We wouldn’t survive past a day….I know myself; I’m to lazy to run the entire world; it just wouldn’t work, although it would be great company. Another idea I had was to buy up all of the fruit loops, and sort them by color. It would be a surprise because you would never know what color you were gonna get!!!! It would be so exciting!!! Other stupid ideas apart from my own include the soda flavored pop tarts. I mean come on; just because you can doesn’t mean you should. None of these ideas though, however insane, can compare the craziest idea of all time….
You are probably wondering what could be more crazy or stupid than orange soda flavored pop tarts. That is an excellent point, but there is in fact and idea so ridiculous and so accepted it might actually be on par with orange soda pop tarts. It’s the idea some people seem to have that we can’t get along or like people who don’t agree with everything we believe. I’ve seen friendships and even family relationships ruined over things like religion and politics and stupid stuff like that. I’m sorry, but if your friendship hinges around agreeing on every little thing than you need to re think your friendship immediately. I’m friends with people because I love them as people. Their personality, sense of humor, kindness. Granted the fact that most of them share some of my same beliefs is a plus, but even then we have a lot stuff that we agree to disagree on.
In the bible there are countless instances where Jesus went out of his way to eat with sinners and tax collectors. He wasn’t going to Olive Garden with me and all my christian friends; He was hanging out with all the people I disagree with, the people I tend to judge because I think I’m better than them. They were the people who needed his love the most. The Gospel is all about love, and that was the message Jesus wanted to teach us. He died for all of us just to show how much he loved us. He wasn’t just dying for the religious people, and he wasn’t just dying for the people who thought they had it all together. He died for all of us; gays, straights, democrats, republicans, vegetarians, telemarketers, prisoners, thieves, liars, Catholics, Lutherans, Atheists, and everyone in between.
He died because he knew that none of us would be perfect. He died because he knew we would have flaws and faults. But he chose to love us because of who we are; not because of what we believe or what we have done. At some point in our lives we will realize that something we once believed to be true isn’t. Just because you believe something doesn’t make you right and it certainly doesn’t make you better than someone else who believes something different. We are all humans with opinions, and although we won’t always agree with someone else’s opinion, we still need to love them. We need to start seeing people as people and not as good, bad, right, wrong, sinners, or saints. I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, and the rest of the people in the world are not perfect. We’ve all screwed up at some point, and we are all going to screw up again.
So it looks like we all have at least one thing in common, but we have something else in common as well. Jesus loves us so much that he gave his life for us… all of us… Even the people we don’t like. See, now there are two things that we all have in common, and I bet if you take the time to look close enough you can find even more.
“We love because he first loved us.” ~1 John 4:19
