What I'll Say About Politics...

The greatest of these is love. 

If you claim your spiritual beliefs are based in love, be careful today. If you claim your politics are rooted in love, be careful today.

Be careful that your actions actually express what you name and claim as your foundational truth.

You've not seen me offer ANY political opinions on Facebook. And many of you haven't even heard them in person. I have opinions and beliefs. Just ask my husband. But I often keep them to myself and exercise them at the polls, write letters, or participate in activities that correspond with those beliefs.
One of the main reason I do this is because I would rather keep those ideas private than to express them in a public forum and have anyone I love feel that my words are hateful toward him/her. Here is what I WILL say.

You know those popular verse...Love is patient, love is kind...

Before that list of what love is, Paul wrote to the Church of Corinth about what DIFFERENCE love makes:

13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13 1-3, New International Version)  

Y'all...this bickering...the gloating...the "in yo face" and the "I'm ashamed...". Be careful that your words don't cause another to feel unloved.

At the end of every day, my mother always asked me, did someone see Christ in you today? Not, did anyone notice your politics? Your stand on immigration, government assistance, education, or abortion.

But did anyone see CHRIST?
But who or what is Christ?
He is Love!
And what is love?

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13 4-13, New International Version)