Dear Family of God and Love and Pilgrims on Our Journey,
Today it hit me that we all have some kind of label or letter that identifies us. Many of these labels and letters only seek to divide and not unite us. Everywhere you go in social media there is some kind of hate lodged at various groups with various identifiers. I'm not going to list them because, here we are all children of God and are all one. No labels, letters and such. It hit me hard this afternoon when I saw a reminder that FDR on this date set in motion the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. When I saw the Facebook link about it it brought back the time when I was called a "Jap" because my facial features looked Japanese and also many people in school also called me "Mongoloid" because I looked like I had Down Syndrome! FYI I'm neither. I just had to wait until all my features developed. That's the last time, I hope I have to use those identifiers unless I do a sermon on labels in the Bible. God made us the way he wanted us to be. God didn't and doesn't use negative identifiers for each of us. We are the only ones who use identifiers. It is time to stop these identifiers in the media, I go crazy with all the labeling, lettering, and branding ! For the next few days and through Lent, take time to treat everyone (remember, here we are all family members and everyone else is too.) lovingly and with compassion no matter who they are, where they are from, etc. See how getting rid of the labels will help us see who God sees! God sees us as God's children and God's creation. Let's start a revolution of love where there is no place for labels only family members of the world. For that is who we are ! We are one!
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Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
God may we resist the need to put labels, letters, brands, and such on your children.
May we be one.
God may we resist using these labels, letters, brands to harm, hurt, discriminate and hate.
May we be loving and united.
God may we resist the need to use labels, letters, brands in describing our family members.
May we see each family member as you see us.
God may we seek to see you in each of our enemies faces and do good to them by remembering they are part of our family too. May we seek to follow the example Jesus set and look to Him as our role model in our family and in our faith.
God may we continue to widen the circle of our family by expanding and tenderizing our hearts and loving each other fully without fear and suspicion.
God we pray for all of our family members who are ill, need, danger, homeless, hungry, and especially these our family members we now name before you________________
God we pray for all our family members who are in nations where there is danger remembering South Sudan, Syria, The Ukraine, and all other parts of the world where there is danger and especially those places that are on our hearts____________________
God we pray for rain and a gentle return to normal weather patterns throughout the world. and in our nation.
God we pray for those who have died today and this hour that they may feel your warm embrace as they begin a new chapter where they are truly one with you. We pray for all who continue to grieve losses of any kind regardless of time. We remember especially_____________________________
God we give you thanks for our family members and all our many blessings and especially all those many blessings _______________________
God we celebrate those special times , family members birthdays, and special saints and persons who are on our calendar and hearts today remembering especially_____________________________
God we wrap these our prayers into a Sabbath Box and know that you are already at work responding to these our prayers, receiving our thanksgivings, acknowledging those special celebrations and consoling us as we remember those who are near and dear to us who now reside with you. All this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
"Hear O, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One". May we all be one!
Good night dear family, I love you and we all are one!
Sara
~ Black Elk
From the Charter for Compassion
“We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me. We have created this world - the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the utter lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another. Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer; we are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain. Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all. We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally. The world is you, and you are the world. Realizing that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
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