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title: "Don't leave it all behind if you can help it."
date: January 7th 2025
---
Are you considering leaving that toxic person behind? I see it a lot, and hear about it all the time. "Why can't people just do the right thing, it's so easy to do the right thing" but is it?
It's actually not easy to do the right thing. If it was, everyone would do it. It's much easier to do the wrong thing. Just like it is much easier to rid yourself of a difficult person than it is to stick with them and help them know the right thing. Love the sinner, hate the sin. I'm not advising you to keep a bad person in your life, we all have to choose what we can handle. Not everyone has the same tolerance to poison, and if someone's bad life is making your life bad it's probably best to cut ties if you can.
It's like Ebenezer Scrooge. He wasn't a bitter evil old man like the Dickens version suggests. He was an old man who thought he was right and the world was wrong. He was above reproach, and lived his life in an ivory tower, alone. It took a change in spirit to change his mind, and open his eyes to the possibility and reality that he was the one who was wrong. A change in spirit that was direved from his past, present, and possible future. The past is set, and sets our minds. The present is the true variable, and the future is unpredictable right up until the one thing we all have in common... death.
If you are close to someone who is like Ebenezer, or worse, you might be the only person close enough to help change their spirit and open their eyes. Even though the Christmas Carol doesn't exactly mention it, there is one piece of that story, one very crucial piece that is there as Christmas, but is truly the truth of Jesus Christ and the true reason we celebrate Christmas. The element of Jesus Christ is important. It's where weak people get their strength to persevere. It's where strong people are humbled. It's where knowledgeable people receive wisdom, and wise people receive clarity. It's where the unloved go to find love, and the dead receive life. To change the spirit you have to go to the one who created it, and the one who loves you and all forever. That is the right thing, and though his yoke is easy, and his burden light, it is not easy to get there. The path is straight and narrow, but so easy to diverge from. Thank God for forgiveness, thank God for mercy, and thank God for grace. So easily spoken, but only one has ever truly, and perfectly devined it to the whole world for all time. My advice is turn to him, and bring whoever will come with you. That's how you change the world, that's how you change your friend, or whoever this person is. Not by your strength, or words. Not by your mercy or forgiveness though that is important, but by his.
Anyway, as we trek onward into the new year I pray you all the best of life, and the best of friends. May your enemies remain few and far between, and your love for their being outshine your hate for their actions. If there are those who love us, let them love us. If there are those who hate us, may God turn their hearts so that they love us, and if God cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so that we recognize them limping away.
Happy new year!