In view of the increasing proliferation of gun related homicides, multiple murders, etc., there always enters the demand for more gun control and I’m sure that may make some difference. However I am more in tune with the old adage, “Guns don’t kill, people do!” As long as you can “keep hate alive” among the masses (by whatever means), there will always be found ever increasing and more sophisticated methods of expressing it-–by men and nations.
I heard just over the past weekend the staggering reminder of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost from the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during WWII. That alone should have put a permanent halt on international warring mentality for the value of innocent lives is not determined by nationality, the shape of eyes, face, or color of skin. Yet we continue to pray for peace while investing increasing $-multi-billions into war and its devastating effects on nations as well as on the men (and their families) who fight them. Through such emotional blindness smoke gets in our eyes impairing your spiritual vision. Peace is of God, war is of man. The closer we draw to the One, the further we get from the other.
The source of all power and peace comes not through hate and war but through love! And as few of us indeed in these mercenary times know what pure love is, it would behoove us to apply the “Hollow Reed” approach and strive to become a pure instrument through which God’s love might flow through to others. Upon achieving any degree of such success, however, “Beseech the Lord your God (However you perceive Him) that no earthly entanglements, no worldly affections, no ephemeral pursuits may tarnish the purity of embitter the sweetness of that Grace which flows through you!”
A primary source of our perpetual discontent, anxiety, and various insatiable appetites derives from ingratitude- (by men and nations) of our innumerable strengths and blessings-–compared to that of others who seemingly have more than we rather than those with less? This is a common malady of those who have (or have been given) too much–by God or man.
In mankind’s infancy as well as in more rural and underdeveloped areas today, families, communities and nations have always pulled together to hurdle whatever challenges arise in war or peace and continue to do so-. The danger passed, however, we also continue to return to our respective racial, political, societal or other segregated corners-–and come out fighting at the bell.
“The virtues that befit man’s dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving kindness toward all the peoples and kindreds of the earth,” we read in the Baha’i Holy Writings for this new Day. “The integrity of the family bond must be constantly considered and the rights of the individual members must not be transgressed. The injury of one shall be the injury of all; the comfort of each, the comfort of all; the honor of one, the honor of all.”
With the continuous quantum leaps of science and technology over recent years it is becoming uncommonly clear, “Today’s world family has truly become too small for anything but brotherhood, and far too dangerous for anything but PEACE! (Investigate!)
