Life is too short

"ASSALAM ALAIKUM" God's peace be with you!

My friend,loving is a hard thing. It is said that when you love be prepared to be hurt. Yes I think this statement is true. Loving is really not an easy task. More often the one who love suffers more than the one we loved. Specially when the one we love does not understand our language of love. Yes, love has its own language in every person. It is acquired on the culture He/She is born in. Like a Chinese talking to an American unless they study the language of the other they will never understand each other. Yes there is a need to study the language of love specially of your chosen lifetime mate if you want it to last forever. It is in knowing that loving comes.

One of the hardest part of love is forgiveness. No one can profess to love without forgiving. It is easy to condemn and not forgive enemies that are impersonal distant, and without human face. And it is equally easy for us not to ask forgiveness from person or people who are faceless, far, foreign, and perhaps belong to another period of history. Yet forgiveness is essential in loving.... without forgiveness there is no love.

Maybe my friend you will ask, what credentials do I have to write about this difficult subject where I too am a spiritual beggar. Maybe my friend I say what I believed in and besides it gives me somewhat a spiritual freedom. I write what I see.

One does not really have to look too far or too hard around us to see the signs of brokeness and dis-order; deep seated conflict, hidden wounding, unrepented sins, unredressed guilt and costly ignorance. Something is fundamentally wrong with our present understanding of the human person's make-up. Modern living has redefined humanity. The meaning of love has been truncated and watered down or altogether ignored that it has cause confusion and even cynism in its usage.It is symptoms of an ailing world. It is a spiritual illness.

Maybe it's secularism. Secularism is a spirit and an attitude that puts God at a distance, removes Him from what goes on with this world,separates Him from human society and human history. Have you ever heard of the song "God is watching us from a distance"?

God who is love is not watching us from a distance. Immanuel! God is with us and in us! This is the God of Jesus..the God of the Scripture..the God who suffers with us and for us in Jesus. Not just in the human nature of Jesus but in Jesus as Son.

In the end I would like to share the life testimony a woman I admire so much for her courage some years ago in a workshop. I would like to hide her in the name Sherbet.

Sherbet's mother was killed by her very own father. She was estrangled, mauled and dumped in a vacant lot. Her father had a mistress and had fallen into bad company. He left and was never heard again. Sherbet hated her father for what he did to her mother but she tried to hide her dark past. Her aunt adopted her and her elder sister legally. Their surname was changed and they were transfered to another school and introduced as their biological children. She was happy for her new family because they were treated as real children. During grade school years, she had been consistent honor student. People admire her for being the prettiest, wealthiest and the brightest in the class. She wanted to prove to the world that she is not like her father.

When she fell in love with a senior student, her parents did not like him. She got pregnant but her boyfriend was not ready to marry her and advised her to have an abortion. Her parents were very angry when they knew about it. She discovered that her boyfriend was irresponsible. His own father was an alcoholic and his mother went abroad to escape. Sherbet broke up with him and returned to her parents who accepted her with open arms.

She joined the Life in the Spirit seminar and was reconciled to God.After recieving the Lord in her heart she was healed of her guilt feelings. She then forgave her real father and asked the Lord to touch him and bring him back to her someday. She also asked forgiveness to her parents for the times that she disappointed or hurt them.

She is grateful to her parents for their support and their presence in her moments of cisis and for loving her as their real daughter.

It must be the grace of reconcillation no less. The grace of love. God was unveild in her life. What do you think my friend.