I hear your heart before you speak it:
“Beloved God, please take me into Your heart. Help me to feel You in my heart so that I never let You out of my heart. Fill my heart with Your capacity for love.
“If I am to love, it is through You. There is nothing without You. I’ve already been without You, and there is nothing there. Without You, life is empty of Fullness. You are love, and I also am to be love as You are love. I, too, am to love everyone.
“Even those who hurt others – I am to love. What heals but love? If I want the world to be a better place, if I really do, instead of pointing out the faults of others, I am to rise above the faults of others. I am to love even those who disdain the value of human life. They need my love most of all. Who needs Good Will the most? Those with rich hearts, or those with flagging hearts or cruel hearts? Which am I when I do not love?
“Just as water fills the lowest river bed, so is my heart to give love to those who follow ignorance. God, help me so emanate love wherever it is needed.
“I say this as if I were wise, God, yet I have been unable to follow what I know to be wise. Even in small things, petty things, I have not been able to live up to what I know. Especially in small petty things. Because of some little peeve, I shut my heart down. I know better how to live, yet I shut my heart down as if the one who peeves me deserves my holier-than-thou heart. Forgive me, God, I have been chintzy with love I am meant to share.
“Because of perceived cruel acts from someone I may not personally know to slights from someone I do know, my heart snubs another heart. There is no reason good enough for me to shut-down my heart with the intention of closing down someone else's heart.
“I remind myself that my heart is not mine but Yours. You, God, want my heart to put love together and not take it apart. Really, who do I think I am to attempt to shut down another’s heart? One who has no love in his heart left to give needs love from me more than I need the love I hang onto.
“I think I know all the answers. How smart and how smug I like to think I am. Somehow I deign to give myself the authority to say who is worth love and who is not. I judge right and left, and I see now that I find myself wanting. I am supposed to know better, yet I enact within myself what I find wanting in someone else.
“If I could keep the home fires of my heart burning, I would be a blessing to the world. As it is, I snub other hearts as if I am too good for them. You, God, do not even have the passing thought that You are too good for me. No, You love, and that's it. Who do I think I am? Am I thinking at all? I copy the image of those that I feel superior to in my unthinking mind.
“Let me follow You, God, in all ways. You have given mercy on me. Can I not spare a little love for someone who needs a lot? Let me give Your Love. Let me let loose the purse strings of my heart. I have no more love than those I condemn. I have been heartless.
“This is my first step in letting go of the idea that I am high and mighty and that any other is less than I am. All the while, I have been less than I thought. I have been a scavenger of thoughts unworthy of You. I must let go of snobbery and welcome love.
“Help me, God, to love.”
I answer your heart:
Begin to love by loving yourself. Let go of the past. Let go of the past, and love will flow from your heart as if there were no past. Empty the past so that now your heart will no longer be sullen, and you will open the floodgates of your heart to embrace the world.
My command to you is to love yourself. Then all love will open to you and issue from you. Then will you be true to yourself.
It is not for you to be a do-gooder in the world. It is for you to simply love as you pass by in the world. This is not a big to-do. You are simply not the judger of right or wrong, good or bad.