Love Others as Ourselves... or Better?

This summer I decided to study the New Testament for the first time in my life. It has definitely been quite a learning experience. Reading the stories that I heard about as a child but with the deeper understanding that age and experience brings has been fascinating.

This week my studies were focused more on Luke and James. While reading chapter 2 in James I came across a phrase that I have heard partially quoted many times:

8 If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:

9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.

It can come naturally to us to love those who have similar interests to us or are in a similar or higher station of life than us. While loving those whom we go to church with or to school or to work can have its own set of difficulties at times, I believe the real test of this commandment is to love the addict, the criminal, those who hate us, etc. just as we love ourselves.

I've been to General Conference a couple of times and it was surprising to see all the Saints in their finery walking right past the beggars just outside Temple Square, some seeming to not even see their struggling brethren. I do not know what choices or circumstances landed those men and women in situations where they feel compelled to beg for handouts to survive but I do know that Christ commands us to love all. What is one thing you think we can do to help develop the capacity to love "even the least of these" our brethren?

Sometimes we fall under that “least of these” category ourselves. Some of us may have a hard time loving ourselves which can be a great limit to our capacity of loving others. There was a dark period in my life where I was very unkind to myself and definitely struggled with a lot of self-loathing. During that period the last thing I would have wanted to do to another was to "love" them like I was loving myself. Many times, I would try so hard to be loving to others in an attempt to try to see myself as a better person than I felt I was. What I learned from that period of my life was that when you find it difficult to love yourself, focus more on learning to see yourself as Heavenly Father does: a loved child who, while imperfect, is still very much worthy of being loved. Once you have come to see yourself as worthy of love, it often becomes easier to then extend that love to others.

Are You Sleeping on Duty?

Some of you might not know but I am a military brat. My father was a career sailor, doing twenty-two years in the United States Navy. Having a parent deployed on a regular basis helped me to be more aware of the outside world as a child than I think is common for civilian children. One thing I have noticed as I have gotten older is that that military influence has definitely shaped how I see certain things in my life.

One example of this came during my scripture studies this week. I've been studying St Luke and something really stood out to me when I read Luke 22:45-46.

45 And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow,

46 And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.

In these verses, the Savior is kind of chastising the Apostles who fell asleep when they were supposed to be guarding as He prayed in the Garden. It really struck me that He found them "sleeping for sorrow". That phrase got the wheels turning in my brain. It made me realize that when we are allowing ourselves to be lulled, it saddens Heavenly Father.  He knows how vigorously and persistently the adversary attacks His children and it must make Him sad to see us dropping our guard.

I've long cherished the idea of my home as a castle, a fortified sanctuary from the world, but this week I've come to realize that I need to also view myself as a soldier living in enemy territory. I need to be doing the things that help keep me armored against the insidious attacks of the enemy. Armor that is neglected becomes rusty, ineffective and eventually incapable of stopping enemy assaults. The beautiful thing is that even if we have allowed our armor to degrade, the Lord has given us the tools to get it back to like-new status if we are but willing to use those tools to restore our damaged armor. Any blacksmith can tell you that fixing damaged armor is not easy but isn't the protection it gives worth the work? What are some things you do to help restore your armor when you discover that you have allowed it to get tarnished or rusty?