At 31 weeks pregnant, I’m (thankfully) not talking about myself,
but this world.

Our world that yearns and moans and cries out for God to rescue.

Like a woman in labor,

Creation seems to crack and pang and suffer more
with each bit of darkness that springs up.

You can’t labor well with negative people in the room with you.

Life, Love can’t flourish with hate.

Instead of blaming the darkness we blame the products of that darkness.
People hate criminals, hate slanderers, hate batterers.

We forget that we are all children of God.
We are all cut from His cloth.
We all possess the components within us
to commit the very same ills,
don’t we?

Our world is brought down and bound up by hate
and we can’t seem to ever really feel free.
Even when we think we’ve stopped hating,
we still have our exceptions,
don’t we?

Just as God gave us the sabbath
and that rest for our own benefit,
so did He create love and
create us to love and
create love FOR us.

When we love like Jesus loved, we’re free.
Free from the bondage of hate and revenge and bitterness.
Free to let go and
free to love.

Love liberates that which was placed deep inside us
when God breathed us into existence.

It frees *Him* in us.

And just as we remember who we are as God’s children,
and remember how we Love with His love,
we can accept that we are all the same.

The same as the slanderers and criminals. But even better news –
the same as the great ones.

Any greatness I see in someone,
I know that the same components for greatness dwell within me.

Our potential for destruction or construction is endless.
And because the First Love already liberated us,
love means we get to choose.

By Arianne, from To Think Is To Create