What We Need to Know 1.

Although our minds are important - we cannot act coherently in the world without first deciding what we think - your soul is not in your head it is in your heart.

Love has always been of secondary importance in religion.  It is the perennial bridesmaid.  Many have made it second to moral rectitude, others have made it secondary to the powers of the mind, or what we believe.  Others have made love secondary to what we do in the world.

The Bhagavad-Gita says that those who choose the way of love are greater than those who mortify the body, those who seek knowledge, or those who do good works.

Paul says you can prophesy and know everything but if you have not love it means nothing.

We have been misled.  We have been told that other things are more important than love.  The world has told us that money and status and possessions will make us happy. They will not.  It is our relationships which make us happy and what is that but love.

It is important to get these things clear in our minds before we begin to act.  Jesus said, "'first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.'"  Matthew 7:5 (NRSV)

We must get these things right.  But that is no end in itself.  That is preparation for what we do next.  Which is how we live our lives.

I live my life by those things which I know to be true:
- that God is near the heart.
- that God does not punish us.
- that there are no sides/no enemies.
- that God treats sinners and saints the same.
- and that is with love.

One penny each.

We are all equal in the sight of God :
The most intelligent scholar is equal with the village idiot.
The most devout Christian is equal with the godless.

But that does not mean we receive nothing.  A penny each.  The penny is love.  And that is enough.

But we are not here to receive.  We are here to give.  To give love to whomever we meet.

Ask yourself, "What does my heart say?"  And follow that.


(Scripture quotations (marked NRSV) are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.  All rights reserved,)

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