Make Love Your Aim

 Don’t settle. 

Don't say, "Well, 

I can't do anything about this situation, 

I've just got it to live with it." 

Love others with God’s love. 

Stand with drawn sword 

to protect the tender hearts of the ones you love, 

the inward being that has not been tainted by avarice, 

stubbornness, and hard-heartedness. 

Respond to the good within those around you 

as if it were the whole person, 

and pray diligently for cleansing 

of that which is not of the Lord.

 Help your loved ones to redirect the survival strategy 

of attempting to please you 

toward the eternal strategy of pleasing God.

--from day 66

Repair for What Has Been Broken

Peace with God and our fellow human beings 

is about finding our respite in Him 

rather than taking it for ourselves. 

It is about finding our acceptance in Him

 rather than trying to win it from others. 

And it is about receiving love from God first 

so that we have love to give to others, 

and so are not needy before them.  

When we sin in our responses 

to precious people who know us best 

and thus have ammunition to hurt us most, 

we can rest in the peace of the knowledge 

that we are perfectly loved by the Lord 

whose power can repair what we have broken 

and what has been broken in us. 

~~~

…for not by their own sword did they win the land,

nor did their own arm save them,

but your right hand and your arm,

and the light of your face,

 for you delighted in them.

Psalm 44:3

--from day 65