Day 148: Doing Good

"Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.  He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God."  3 John 11

From our earliest days of childhood, we have learned what is good and bad.  And, for the sake of childhood, it was pretty straightforward: treat others nicely, for that is good; anything else is bad.  In the same way, we should look at things that are good versus evil.

Perhaps a great starting point is the golden rule, or the second greatest commandment: treat others the way you want to be treated.  We want to spread good into the world, because that will help build up a better world out there.  We won't have to face so much hate when we spread the love around.

As Christians, we have heard so many times from Jesus about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, the chief being to love.  When we love, we are showing God to everybody around us.  When we love, we live our faith.  When we love, we are accepting God into our hearts.  When we spout hate, though, we stray from God.  When we hate, we do evil, which is a sign that we have not seen God.

In fact, people will only know that we our Christians by our love, as the song goes.  We will only be able to claim to be followers in the light of God when we love.  When we love, we unite our wills with the will of God, for God is love.  When we do good, when we love, we begin to understand that we are of God.  It gets pretty difficult to be part of God when we choose to hate or put down other people.  It gets really difficult to understand everything that Jesus talked about whenever we hate, especially because Jesus corrected his disciples and followers so many times whenever they wanted to show hate.

The Devil has made many attempts to stray us away from our path of love.  The Devil has also shown us that his way is one of hatred, one that will trip people up from following the light.  Rather than imitating the Devil by causing others to stumble because of our willing ignorance or our prejudices, we need to continue to do good, to love.  We need to follow God in every situation, and we need to minister God to others by means of our love.  We can only introduce God to others when we show God's nature acting in us - by love.