jesus is the master

The book I'm reading right now is called "Unconditional? The call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness" by Brian Zahnd. If you'll recall, one of my goals for 2011 is this:

Focus my life on love as the most important thing, and learn to embrace everyone in my life with unconditional love. Family, friends, coworkers, strangers. Unconditional love, forgiveness, mercy. This is the only way to love...

Forgiveness is an interesting concept to study, and you it seems you can't have unconditional love without it. I have a lot to learn, a lot to soak in, a lot to meditate on. It's definitely an area with room for personal growth, and I always welcome that.

In my life, I haven't had a lot of tragedy or heartache...I have been really blessed. The biggest thing I've had to overcome is my relationship with my father, and I made huge strides in that arena of forgiveness last year on my Sabbatical. But there are smaller things that need forgiveness too...grudges are held, ugly words or feelings arise, situations occur that I can't control that eat at me for weeks. I am open to learning how to be better at love and forgiveness and mercy, and know the Holy Spirit will lead me on my journey.

One funny thing I have read in the book so far, when he was talking about the sixties...he said that the "love and peace generation of the sixties wasn't so wrong in trying to imagine something better than a world filled with hate and war -- it was wrong in not finding a better messiah than the Beatles"! That made me chuckle.

Here is what I have grasped from the reading so far. Jesus is the master of life. Jesus is the master of living well, living rightly, living truly. He is the master of living a human life as God intended. And at the center of Jesus's teaching on how we should live is the recurring theme of love and forgiveness.

Lots to learn...