Do Unto part 2
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's the Golden Rule. But when we follow that rule, we have to make sure that we're doing unto others as THEY would have us do unto them. Not trying to push what WE want on people, but simply seeing a need and meeting it in the way that THEY need it met. Doing unto others as they need done unto them. Because treating people the way we want to be treated is just about general kindness. We want people to treat us kindly. So we need to be the change that we want to see in the world. It's not about, "I want someone to give me something... so I guess if I give them something..." No. Love is never about getting. Because love IS giving. If you're "loving" someone in order to get something from them... that's not love at all. We don't do unto others in order to get from them. We do unto others because God has done unto us. Look at 1 John 4:11, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." Receiving and releasing the love of God. That's how we live this abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love that we have been given. Not by trying to get it--we already have it--but by giving it away. By sharing it. By filling ourselves to overflowing with the love that God loves us with. Letting God love the hell out of us and then loving the hell out of each other! Letting God love us and then loving Him back by loving the people in our lives. Whatever we do to the least of them we do to Him, right? How we interact with people is how we interact with God. Because God lives in people. So it's all about love. We want to be loved. So we ought to love. Because the best way to feel love is to love people. It's not in the getting. It's in the giving. Because love IS giving. I'm just gonna keep saying it. Love is giving. Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, in a word, means loving people. And loving people takes a bit of wisdom. You have to know someone in order to really love them. When my wonderful wife Amanda brings me home food without even asking me what I want... it's because she's knows me. She knows what I'm about. We have that relationship. That connection. She doesn't get me the food that SHE would want to eat. She gets me the food that she knows I want to eat. Little things like that that are really big things. Because humans want to be known. We want to be understood and accepted. And as hard as it is for people to look past themselves, that's a rare thing. When you find it, you don't want to give it up. It's just so... nice. To know and to be known. To have that bond. That connection. That relationship. Where you care about someone and they are about you. Where you can stand back to back and face everything that comes from every direction. So when you're thinking about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you... stop thinking about yourself. If you want people to think about you... you have to think about them. Put others first. Don't think less of yourself... just think of yourself less. Don't worry about what you can get. Think about what you can give. That's what makes this life worth living. A life of service. A life of love. Living for others. Giving what you've got to others. Loving other!