A World of One

" Lifting His eyes up to Heaven, Jesus prayed, saying, 'Holy Father, I pray not only for them [the disciples], but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in me and I am in You; that they may also be in us, that the world may believe that You sent me. . . . . Father, they are Your gift to me. I wish that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may see my Glory. Righteous Father, the world does not know You, but I know You, and they know that You sent me. I made known to them Your name and I will make it known, that the love, with which You loved me, may be in them and I in them." [John 17: 20-26]

This Scripture is one of the last prayers that we hear of, before Jesus is crucified and dies on the cross.

This is a poignant prayer. Unbelievably, Jesus prays for His disciples, and for all those who WILL believe in Him through the disciples' Word. That is, Jesus prays for US!

Even more unbelievably, Jesus calls His disciples, God's gift to Him! By extension, this means that we, as Christians, many generations removed, are His disciples, and are also God's gift!

I grew up in a home without Love. And yet, I have great Love for others. I once asked my pastor: 'It is said that you cannot love, unless someone has loved you first. So, how is there is so much Love in my heart, despite my heartless family ?" He told me, " Your Love comes from God!"

Understanding this so clearly now has changed my life. For, even if no one else on the planet loves me, I have the precious Love of God and Jesus in my heart. And this is a Love that no one can take away.

And the corollary of that is, this Love, with which God loved His Son, is in me! I have often feared that I will somehow "run out of Love." And now I know the Truth, that the Love inside me is as infinite as God Himself!

I look back on my life and I see that I have been able to love completely and unconditionally, even though I did not know where this Love came from. Somehow, I realized that this infinite Love inside me was be used, not wasted :

When I was in graduate school, a man broke into my apartment. He held a large knife in his hand, and he assaulted me. He tried to kill me when I fought back. I briefly snatched the knife out of his hand, but I did not have the heart to use it against him. He left me, battered and bloody. I had to call 9-11. Before the police even arrived, I had forgiven this assailant. I did not know at the time, why I forgave him. I just did. Now I know why. This assailant also had God's Love inside him. I could not hurt him back. No matter what he had done to me, we were brother and sister in Christ.

My parents left me in that far-away city to fend for myself. I was told to stay in school and earn top grades. As if nothing had even happened to me. At first, I could barely roll over in bed. It was difficult to make meals. I was afraid for the first few weeks to even leave my apartment. But I never hated my parents. I just prayed for Wisdom.

Yet, after my father died many years later, I took my mother back in an instant. I told myself, 'After all, this is my mother. I cannot abandon her, the way she did me.' Now I realize that I was responding this way, because I was honoring that God was also in my mother; and no matter what she had done to me, if I abandoned her, I would have been abandoning God.

This precept of faith-- that God's Love is inside all of us-- is sometimes hard to take. In Matthew 25: 42, Jesus explains: " For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger [alone in a far city], and you did not invite me in; I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and you did not care for me. Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do, unto me".

My parents did all those things to ME, their only daughter. This means that, in reality, they were also doing these things to Jesus Himself! How painful this is!

But if I abandon or hurt them back, or commit these egregious acts against others, I am only doing these things TO Jesus!

I have been criticized for behaving this way. People have said that maybe I was a fool. Or blind. Or pathological.

What I say to you is that, everyone in this whole entire world is a child of God. We all have a piece of Jesus and God in our hearts. We are one World. How does that make you respond when you hear of an abused child; a greatly impoverished country; an elderly person who is alone and ill? If you reject, abuse or abandon these, you are killing the Jesus in your own soul.

Have you ever heard of "Kid President"? He says, "Hey, we are all on the same team!"

Criticize me all you will, call me names. But, I pray that God will one day be saying to me, "Well done, my good and faithful daughter! Come and share your master's happiness!" [John 25: 21].

[Related postings: "We Are One", May 27, 2012; " Prayer For Wisdom", July 23, 2011. ]

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