Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.

A couple nights ago I was watching a Nooma video [Name] and this is what really stuck out to me.

We each have this unique calling that God has given us. Jesus invites us to be our true selves and yet we get sidetracked and we get distracted on how we look different from her or we are not like him and we end up asking the wrong questions. We end up asking “what about him? What about her? What about them?” Some people are smarter and some people have more money and some people have a certain body type, that’s just how it is. We’ll never live from our true selves when we are comparing ourselves to those around us. Like it says in proverbs 14:30:

“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.”

How much life do we lose when we are endlessly comparing ourselves to others? When we are jealous of what someone else has, or even who someone else is? You and I have pasts; families we’re from, things we’ve done, mistakes we have made. But all of those things have shaped us into the people we are today. So we have to embrace our story. You don’t have to be proud of it but you have to claim it because its yours. And once we claim our past, our mistakes, our family, we can begin to answer the question “who am I”. But who you are is not where you’ve been. If you are in Christ, who you are is what has been done for you. Look no farther then the cross. 

Do you wish you were someone else or something else? From that family, instead of your own? With those abilities instead of the ones given to you? with that body instead of the one that’s yours?

“what is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all these things and He might weep when they are gone.” - St. Catherine of Siena

She has her path, he has his path, they have their path, and you have your path. You and I, we have limits, there are all sorts of things we aren’t, all sorts of people we aren’t. Maybe this is why Jesus says to “love your neighbor as yourself”. How can I ever love and embrace someone else when I have never come to terms with who I am, and then who I’m not?

xoxo