The Queen and timeless Love

We have been blessed for 96 years with a Queen who believed in the divine and eternal power of Love. She lived a long life that reflected that faith, positioned as one of the rare peacemakers of this world, and building constant, everlasting bridges worldwide with the labor of her loving, forgiving and compassionate heart.

Her absence leaves us with a sentiment of orphanhood as we navigate this world with less and less leaders inspired by this Love. However, while we are in mourning, we must remind ourselves that this is just a brief separation, as our Queen is now where we all long to be, and where we will all be joined together soon.

May this time be one of deeper reflection about who we are called, and meant to be. And may our Queen’s loving heart that made us love her so much live on as tangible inspiration for each of us to keep seeking the same willingness to always serve others in Love.

Love covers all our flaws

Have you spent the last couple of years making concessions so you would fit in? A lot of us have. And while these circumstances were a trigger of fit-in behavior, we should take this opportunity to better understand why we gave in.

For what reasons, and for how long are we willing to dissolve ourselves and lose our own identities in order to be a ‘part’ of a world that does not love us? A world that will drop us if we fail?

The answer is: not too long until we become deeply frustrated, angry and bitter. And what will really haunt us is not our difficulty to forgive others, but to forgive ourselves as we live with the consequences of our own decisions knowing that we could have made better ones had we not given in to the fear of not fitting in.

We should all know by now that whenever we try to live by strict rules, we are bound to fail at some point. We are human, and thus we are inherently flawed. We are living the life that others expect us to live when we make an effort everyday to be the perfect people that we are not.

When we accept that we are not in control, and that we never were or ever will be, that frees us from living under unfair expectations and introduces us to the real life we never had before.

This real life is the one we are all called to live. And it is only when we surrender to Love that we start living it.

Because Love covers all our flaws.

And when we put Love first in life, and allow it to guide us, we do not experience regrets. With Love, life no longer feels like a countdown, because we know Love transcends space and time.

Love allows us to transcend the world and start living without fear, especially the fear of death that drives many of us to make hasty decisions thinking we are running out of time.

But so what if we are running out of time? Love makes a day feel like a year, and a year feel like a day. It gives us a conscience that is no longer bound by feelings of who we are not, or not being good enough, and takes us on a journey of who we were always meant to be.

With Love, we live what we can, how we can, when we can.

I had no trouble being myself in the last couple of years and lived a relatively normal life. And the secret is simple: I know how to be subtle about my different outlook in life. Instead of using these differences to confront others, I focus on similarities that can unite us.

Remember: we need to be patient with those who think differently.

We are not called to turn our differences into instruments of divisiveness. When we keep Love in the foreground of how we treat each other, these differences become secondary and often don’t even come up.

At the same time, we are also not called to be perfect, but to be loving. And to love each other regardless of our different choices in life, and our shortcomings.

When we live this way, we do not feel the need to fit in. Putting Love first in our lives gives us this confidence and allows us to enjoy the peace, joy and hope that come when we confidently know why we don’t fit in this world.

Enjoying the freedom of being forgiven

There is a freedom we can only enjoy when we know we are forgiven. It gives us peace to live life as we can, based on the conscience we have, and not as others think that we should.

Being forgiven humbles our hearts.

But we still need to be watchful of different people who will come around trying to question this freedom.

Remember, “church” is not a group or a place. It is a spiritual dimension filled with love, not judgement.

Let the One who called you guide your heart with his peace. And enjoy the forgiven life of freedom he gave you.

We heal when we forgive everyone

Forgiveness sets us free, but selective forgiveness has the opposite effect. We only heal when we forgive everyone.

No exceptions.

Serial killers, dictators, rapists? People who have cheated, abused and committed crimes against us? Yes, we are called to forgive them too. Our calling is to forgive the whole world.

If we forgive only the people who we think deserve to be forgiven, we are doing nothing more than judging them based on merit and singling them out.

When we take this path, we inevitably feed resentment. That’s how we end up chained to the people we can’t forgive. 

We have to forgive everyone. Instantly.

Forgiveness is an attitude towards life. Even people who have no relationship with God know that. What they don’t know is that it is only by God’s grace that we can forgive with a loving heart.

When we seek him first, we experience the power of forgiveness as a blessing. And it releases us from our chains straight into his loving arms, where we enjoy his peace and joy.

Love gives us eternal life in a world full of deadly fears

Have we finally given in to the world and its fear of death? So many have started using worldly language and imposing limits on our lives. Most look for answers in the media and start relying on what governments can or cannot do.

But what can governments do? What can I? What can you?

We know there is very little that any of us can do in a world that is dominated by darkness. We know only an almighty power can overcome this world and, in fact, it has already overcome it. 

This isn’t a time to figure out creative (and profitable) ways of connecting with the aid of technology. It is a time to face our difficulty to rely exclusively on the One who made us.

We experience his power when we seek him. And his power is love. Not what the world thinks love is. Divine love. The world only knows a shadow of it, yet love already shows an unmistakable power to change our lives for the better.

Love is the power that made and moves the universe.

What is expected from us is that we love one another. It is through this love that we have eternal life and that the poisonous death that consumes this world is defeated. 

When we love one another and rely on his power, he makes the impossible possible. Because nothing is impossible for the One who made everything and conquered death with love.

If it glows, then it is Love

We all have tasted loneliness at some point in our lives. 

It isn’t simply about not having company, but about having quality company that does us good. And that is not easy to find.

But the good news is, we are far from being alone. And this loneliness that clouds our judgment and keeps us from seeing with the eyes of faith can be defeated.

So how do we defeat it? Well, the answer is: we don’t. It is the One who made us with unconditional love who defeats it. But he can only defeat our loneliness when we humbly accept his love. 

Our lives are transformed when we become conscious of this love and gain the confidence, through faith, that we are not alone.

When we follow his ways, there’s no reason to feel lonely, because he gives us every opportunity to be with others who reflect his love. 

Yet if we still feel lonely at times, we just have to call his name and he will be there through the people he brings into our lives.

Savouring the bread of life

Grace is the expression of love. And love is the nature of God.

When God is expressed and revealed in Jesus, his love becomes grace and we are able to experience it as we seek him.

We were once dark and became one with darkness. Now we are light because we are one with God. And God is light.

As his beloved children, we share his divine life and nature. In other words, our calling is to be imitators of God.

When we receive God as grace and experience him as truth, he makes his home in our spirit and we enjoy his love and light.

He gives us our daily bread, and he is the bread of life.

Express your faith with love

When we surrender to the divine love that God shares with us, he makes his home in us and we start living through his Spirit.

So let us shine as luminaries in the world along with the new year, encouraging our brothers and sisters as we express our love for them and embody the peace of mind that our faith blesses us with.

We live in peace when we become agents of peace in the world

Right after my conversion from atheist to believer, I had this group of friends who were Christian libertarians. They loved guns and hated minorities – just not publicly.

Being new in the faith, I took all that as normal human flaws and tried my best to be patient with them. But as my understanding of the word deepened, the strong shift from love to hate just didn’t feel right.

Friends, there’s a moment in our lives when we need to take a stand if we want to walk with Jesus. We can’t walk with Jesus and invite violence into our lives.

Following Jesus transforms the animalistic beasts that we are into the pacified, loving little Jesuses that we are meant to be. But when we’re not seeing this transformation in ourselves, we need to search our spirit, as God already does, to fully understand why we sometimes still shift from love to hate.

The one we claim to follow teaches us to love and pray for our enemies. If we can’t, we’re either pretending to follow him, or we are deliberating to follow that other one that he gave his life to save us from.

Thanks to God’s grace I found peace, in him, to fight the good fight and dare to love in an unforgiving world. It is a daily exercise, and one that we can absolutely achieve as long as we rely on him who makes everything possible.

No one can take life from us

Suicide might not be an option for you, and it also isn’t for me. But it was an option on 13 Reasons Why, and it is an option in this fallen world for those of us who are crushed by loveless interactions and missing the life only God gives.

There are certain things that the vast majority of people don’t understand. One of them is the fact that some of us are extremely sensitive. Seeing the world for what it really is feels like a massive burden.

The reason why I am grateful for 13 Reasons Why is the fact it shows that burden. I remember when I was an atheist. Although not a school girl like Hannah, everyone got to me. I was so acutely aware of the world.

I was also deeply aware of myself and how my actions impacted others. And, contrary to what a lot of people like to believe, not everyone who feels this way has a mental illness or a low self-esteem. I didn’t.

At the time I used to go to psychologists and they were all puzzled too, because I had good self-esteem and no mental illness, anxiety or depression.

And the saddest part about this series is the response coming from viewers who judge Hannah. Yes, she was pointing the finger at others who hurt her, but it isn’t any better to point the finger at her for committing suicide.

She felt wronged the whole time and that was bound to crush her to death. It almost crushed me several years ago. And I am writing this because God’s love reached me just as it is reaching people like Hannah to lift that burden and save us from that deadly darkness where we can no longer see.

A God who is merciful with murderers who repent will also be merciful with a crushed human. If we think someone who couldn’t take this world anymore went to hell, I would be far more concerned about our merciless judgment.

None of us can know who goes where. Ever!

We are called to love one another, and we always can, because God’s love makes it possible. We are called to love all the Hannahs of this world and be willing to be the best that we can be for them and for all others around us.