"Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins."
Proverbs 10:12
This is a good reminder. Sometimes we blow off simple messages like this because we already know... hate is bad, love is good, okay, we understand. But maybe we don't... or at least not deeply enough to avoid the pitfalls of hatred or to really examine and purge it from our lives.
We get it into our heads that it is okay to love our friends and families, but that people outside our circle of understanding or acceptance are okay to hate. People who are philosophically opposed to our positions, or people who trespass against the Lord because they sin differently than we do. People who are stirring up evil or actively harming us or other people... surely, they are okay to hate, right?
But no... God asks us to love even our enemies (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27, 35; 3 Ne. 12:44). This is obviously challenging, but if we think about it, we can find ways to love people who we are opposed to in some way. We can pray for them, we can avoid disparaging them publicly or privately, we can learn more about them and seek more understanding... all these things depend on the situation of course, but God will help us learn to love even the hardest people to love... after all, he loves them, and he loves us, even when we are difficult to love.
Today, let's do our best to embrace love and to avoid hatred. Let's speak of others in a loving way rather than in a hating way, to begin with, and then look to God for ways to improve from there. :)
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