It's been a Long Time

It's been a long time since I posted last. However, I have had a long spell of problems that were very difficult to work out...that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. However, it does not say that I was a long way from Christ. Christ is my prop and my life and how I get through every day.
That being said, why blog now? My inspiration, my unsung hero today just took me to the place where I had to write. The hero of today is not exactly unsung, but his op-ed piece in today's paper might not be read by everyone in the world, and everyone could learn from it, right, left and in-between.
Garrison Keillor is the syndicated columnist and his opinion piece today titled "Renouncing Evil Powers and Anonymity" was one that gives great thought to something Christ taught. In Matt.6, when Christ teaches us how to pray, He says, "do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil", and thus tells us to not be swayed to evil.
We have long thought that familiarity breeds contempt...It's an adage we learned early. Today, Keillor suggests in his opinion that it is "isolation, social separation, that breeds contempt." I know that this has to be true, because people are basically kind and good and do have a need to love each other. God made us that way. Yet we hear many disparaging remarks made about others--that down deep only can come from fear of the unknown. Many people fear what they don't understand, and present that fear as hatred--it's what humans do when they can't do anything else. So, many, but not all people, hate gays, Muslims, Republicans or Democrats, environmentalists, foreign speaking people, mentally ill people, homeless, and the list goes on and on.
To turn away evil, to really get into the Christ mind set, there is a simple rule of thumb that we can test ourselves on: Ask yourself, "is this a loving thing to do? Is this a loving way to think?" Then we have the Christ rule before us as our measuring stick, our lightening rod, our guide.
And like Keillor today, we can all be heroes.