Blessed

It's such a great feeling when we are understood. When someone just "gets us". Being accepted is a peaceful feeling. Especially when we accept ourselves too. When we are not judged, or ridiculed we feel nothing but loved, nothing but peace. No one is trying to fix us or prop us up. It is a simplicity where we can just be, whether among friends, family or strangers, we fit. And so do those around us.

Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) considers how one faith understood love as the ultimate fulfillment. Rachel writes that faith teaches compassion for the poor, esteem for women, healing for the sick, and solidarity with the suffering. It means breaking bread with outcasts and embracing little children. It means choosing forgiveness over retribution, the cross over revenge, and cooking breakfast for the friend who betrayed you.

Such great teachings are there if you look. Study and understand. Seek and try to live out what we truly desire. Acceptance, peace and love. Of neighbour and of self. And as always, it starts with you. We can react or we can wait and choose to love instead. And be loved.

If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm. We have been asked to love one another. We’ve been entrusted with some of the greatest lessons ever told. How we harness that power, whether for good or evil, oppression or liberation, changes everything. We've been blessed. And blessed are the peacemakers.