It's an interesting irony, in an attempt to help our children we tell them that to have friends, you must be a friend...we send a message of love and be loved, help and be help, deliver kindness receive kindness in return. unfortunately, due to my personal life experience i can't continue to circulate that logic. sure, being kind and friendly is going to reap more positive results than being cold, and mean, but we can't teach people to expect those things. we aren't entitled to anything. we aren't entitle to good things. we shouldn't expect people to treat us well, just because we give everything we have to them. it's just a path to disappointment. People even those who love you, will let you down. It's just a fact, you can give, and give, and give and receive a slap in the face in return. we can't expect good things to happen simply because we are "good people." instead we need to learn how to work through cruel treatment. we need to learn how to continue being self sacrificing when selfishness surrounds us. we need to learn to not stop loving and not stop caring simple because those around us stop. we have to become overcomers. perseverance needs to become our ally, our spouse, our best friends. don't let your heart become hard and calloused because people can't love you like you love them...otherwise hate has won, and we can't let that happen. i know from personal experience abandonment and rejection of family so those of you who are in that storm, i'm right there with you, feeling your same pain your same hurt. continue to love through the pain, experience the pain. abandonment and rejection is some of the worst pain a person can experience and if you can learn to overcome the desire to become numb and calloused, you have beaten one of your greatest foes in life...
-j.hakim
This makes me think of the sermon on the mount, Matt 5: 38-47, where Jesus says "You've been taught to respond in like kind--good for good, evil for evil--but I'm telling you to love your enemies, pray for your persecutors, give up your rights, because this is how the world will know me and my Father." And it's so true: to the world, it makes sense to respond in like kind, but it doesn't make sense when someone returns good for evil or evil for good. Christ taught us that sacrifice wasn't just about death on a cross, it was about living a life of vulnerability, of being open hearted and loving here and now despite the harms and snubs we receive for it. Even the golden rule doesn't come with a guarantee "do unto others as you WISH they would do to you" (Matt 7: 12), but it's a command from Christ nonetheless, a call to consider others better than ourselves, to give all as he gave expecting nothing--or if anything, expecting persecution--in return. That's a challenge, and I especially struggle with not getting cold hearted. But I'm so encouraged when I remember that God is on my side--his Spirit to guide me, His Son to show me an example--teaching me how to live as he wants me to.
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