Hate is not your friend.  It will only destroy you.

   Hating a hateful person is also hate.  Many of us feel justified in our hate because we are only hating the hateful people.  You know, them.  But hate will get us nowhere.  We all know this.  Yet hate stirs up within us.  It starts as anger and then gets twisted into hate.  Anger towards a wrong, like hate, is justified.  But allowing anger to become hate itself worse; we now have more hate.

   We must not give into hate.  When we hate, we are opposing love.  Love builds up, but hate destroys.  It destroys not only your relationship with the other person, but also with God.  God loves that person.  You do not have to agree with someone to love them.  Indeed if that was the case, we all would be damned.

   Love is a choice.  Hate is our other choice.  Sure, there are cases when we are trying to be loving, but we fail to do so fully.  In those cases, our intention is to love, which is great.  We are just bad at it.  This does not mean we should give up trying though.  Just because it is difficult or we fail many times, does not mean love should be abandoned.  Love is the perfection that we seek.

   We desire love so much.  So much that a newborn dies without loving touch.  Sure, our hearts may become hardened because of others, but that should never, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, stop us from reaching for the ideal.  When our hearts become hardened, we become less of who we were created to be.  We were created for God to love us, by God who is love, and to love God and others.

   When we hate, we are destroying the lover we were created to be.  And as such, we destroy ourselves.  Sure, we may point the finger and say “he started it”, but that does nothing.  Both Adam and Eve pointed the finger, yet they knew better.  We know better.  We know in our hearts that love is ALWAYS  the best choice.  Not the easiest choice by any means, but the best choice.  And we were designed for the best.

   Jesus, You always chose love.  May we be strengthen to love by recalling all of the suffering that You endured because You chose to love us, though it killed You.  Amen.

   Love was not killed on the Cross, it was on full display!  And since you cannot kill love, He rose again.