Be Encouraged - Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Sometimes the world feels like this to me. A mass of identical people who are all pushing and pulling to get the best and newest things. It consistently overwhelms me. Faces in a grocery store, driving past me, and pushing around me in the office, seem to be a sea of all the same face over and over again. It is hard to remember they are all people, when they are pushing me out of the way and taking the last apple at the store.

However, I often times have the opposite problem as well. I see an elderly person alone and want to share a meal with them. I see a girl crying and I want to hug her and find out if she is ok. I see a man looking stressed and I want to see if there is anything I can do to remove the stress from his life. I cannot remove these images of these people from my head even when we have parted ways. Total strangers linger in my mind. I hope they worked out what was wrong.

How can I find the balance of these 2? The world where people are aggressive and the world where people appear hopeless... I can only think of the Bible and it's words of wisdom. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and Love your neighbor as yourself." The only thing I can think is to focus on people as individuals, offer up a prayer on their behalf if they touch my heart, and trust that their life is in God's hands.

I want to encourage you to not just go through your day to day and let the people around you fade into the background. I struggle with whether this is a blessing or a curse, but concentrate on letting people effect you. See them as people, not objects in your way to getting your groceries. Pray when you pass a car accident. Pray when you see someone crying. Offer to carry someone's groceries, don't just watch them struggle. Open your eyes in your day to day.

Be encouraged - Love Your Neighbor As Yourself.

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