Love and Hate

Love and Hate

“There is one other fundamental difference between love and hate.  Love is always a refuge.  Hate is never a refuge.  Only a mentally sick person can find refuge in his hates.  But love is the enduring sanctuary of life.  Life may rob you of many things.  It often does.  But it can never bereave us of love itself.  That remains.”
-Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, rabbinic leader, from a December 22, 1940, sermon,    quoted in Therefore Choose Life: Selected Sermons, Addresses and Writings of    Abba Hillel Silver, Volume One, edited by Herbert Wiesner (1997)
I don’t know much of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver but I do know that at the time he wrote what I quoted above six million Jewish men, women and children were being put to death. And millions more were dying also.
In the end world war two, a war that was started by a mad man would kill depending on what figure you take between fifty six and sixty million people. All because of a mad man who hated.
Like the first world war, world war two was not the war to end all wars. Millions have died since and millions are dying now at the hands of evil men.
As I write this there is a terrorist group ISIS out to kill Christians and minority groups they disagree with in the middle east. The United States is so concerned that they are ordering their military to bomb them. Word has it they are also dropping humanitarian supplies to these people who are fleeing what amounts to a genocide.
The men that are causing this humanitarian crisis have no love. They are filled with an idealistic doctrine that hold life in little regard. Love is not in their vocabulary. They are filled with hate.
The Apostle Paul wrote of Love,
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 
Love never fails.” 
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
Irrespective of what your faith is or whether you have a faith. Even atheist can agree hate is an animal that devours everything.
Love conquers all.
The Apostle Paul said it best,
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 
                                                                                                 1 Corinthians 13:13 
Think about it.