I've Never Seen This Before

We have mountains immediately outside our windows, at eye level.
I never saw them for about 2 weeks

We have soft serve ice cream venders everywhere you look. I had no idea until about 3 days ago that they existed in China at all.

Similarly, I've been a part of a tradition and historical and global familiy that has stressed loving people. I read and heard about it more than I could ever recount. Yet, just recently, it "appeared" to me just how central loving people is.

It's the (not "a") central means given to us for joy--both ours and others. Strangely, this whole idea of loving people (as I'm now beginning to see it) is so novel. Have other people seen this before? Do other people know this thing is important? Honestly, I had no idea. I might as well have been talking about Plato's Republic or the Walls Street Journal. Love was an idea, a concept, a precept, a word, an objective, a theme, pick your comparison....

What do I do now?

Is loving like riding a bike? There's a lot of fear in learning to ride a bike. I will fall. I will hurt myself. I will crash and hit things...they will hit me!

A year and a half ago, I was healed of some anger I held for a umber of years. I thought that meant that I now loved people. No. I just didn't hate people. Not doing something does not really mean positively that I'm doing the opposite. I know feel the hope, expectation, anxiety, confusion, and uncertainty that comes when you learn you have a great journy ahead of you. The finish line is further than expected. "I'm not almost there."

Yet, in a way, to love is be perfect. That is, to attain the purpose and goal of our life. In that way, we can be perfect as He is perfect. Think of me and us and we learn to love well, all people, positively, in joy, and in freedom, and, most inportantly, in natural response to our being love with such a great, eternal, mysterious, unexpected, and undeserved love.

I'm not there yet, but your thoughts will help.