i have to love who?

"Which is most important of all the commandments?" Jesus said, "The first in importance is, "Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: "Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." (Mark 12, The Message)

There it is, the two single greatest commandments from our Rabbi, that all of the rest ebb and flow from. The first one is easy – at least for me to say. I love Him, I love Him with all my heart. It is that second one that is so hard, trying and sometimes, ridden with angst. In the Message translation, it is eight words long, eight small words, with so much packed into each of them it would take a freight train to carry all that these words mean and command to us.

How is it that people who claim the first half of this commandment can so easily skip over the second half. How can they say that they love God with all their heart and then just glide over the part about other people?

Why does being a family have to be so hard. Why do we hurt the ones we love the most? Why we do think we are afforded the opportunity to say whatever we want and to hurt people to their core?

My sister-in-law is getting married next week and wanted to have a beach wedding. The beach of choice is about 8 hours away from the immediate family members (about 17 for us) and now, my mother-in-law’s side of the family has made the decision that they are not going to attend the wedding. It came down to, in the simplest of terms, economics. They simply can not afford to make the trip and in addition, Granny is not in the best of health conditions and the trip wouldn’t really help that. My mother-in-law have taken this to be personal slight to her and my sister-in-law, she sees this as a slap to their faces, they believe that this is being done intentionally, that the family is doing this to hurt them. They are not recognizing that traveling to this wedding is a huge burden to a lot of people, and costly (considering the cost of gas). Rather, she has made outlandish accusations that are very hateful and has told her brother and his family that she never wants to speak to any of them again.

With nowhere else to turn to, the brother (the husband’s uncle) calls my husband to ask him to please try to talk to his mother and explain the situation. He also wanted to make sure that we didn’t think that what she was saying was true, to be sure that we didn’t believe the hurtful accusations – which are nothing new to us – and we never believe anyhow.

Why does being a family have to be so hard? Why is it easier to love the stranger on the street corner some days than love your own flesh and blood?