I have been thinking about this passage a lot lately. With everything I see and hear going on in the world It seems everyone has completely lost touch with this part of Jesus’ teachings. I read and see people get angry over trivial things and then react with unbridled violence. I unfortunately had to experience something like this first hand quite recently.

It was a nice quiet New Year’s evening when at 8:30 p.m. I heard what I thought was firecracker’s very close to my home. I get up to look and see a car racing off. The police showed up within a few minutes. I went down to see what was going on and discovered that where a shootout in my front yard.

I live on a corner lot. Several people decided to use my house to setup an ambush for a car driving down one of the streets that pass my house. The shooting lasted for only about ten seconds. In that short time, there were 15 to 20 shots fired. There were spent shell casing on my front porch and strewn across my front lawn. I was extremely fortunate that these people could not aim well as my home did not get hit by gunfire; however, three of my neighbor’s homes were hit. The targeted car was hit four times and crashed up the street almost driving into a home. The shooters and those in the crashed car ran off before the police arrived.

It makes me wonder why in the world would anyone think to do something like this? What ever happened to caring about those around you? Yes, there will be times when you get upset over something someone does, but to have no consideration for the life of another or yourself I just don’t understand.

I think this passage of scripture has a message that we all need to think about and live by. There is so much hate being spewed on social media by people that don’t think anything of saying horrible things. It is very disheartening. We all need to follow the teachings of Jesus and live the life he asks us to and…

Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.