What Is Up With This World?

"We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." – 1 John 4:19-20

I am calling it a day & I will be turning in shortly, but before I do, I want to make a quick post and ask everybody if we can just play nicely. Life is short. We need to make the best of each & every day.

My brother is going through a very tough time right now, wading through divorce issues & the trouble that goes along with it. Could things have turned out differently for his family & him? Certainly. Did they? Not at all. I just got finished with a rather long conversation with him - one in which I tried to give him positive words - words of encouragement. It is difficult to watch the family go through the things we have experienced in the past year. It is especially difficult to listen to him speak, with not only his damaged ego, but with the knowledge that his life has now changed forever and in a way he never imagined. While I believe his situation will change for the better in the "long run", provided he stays the course, I cannot help but wonder, what could have been if only they would have chosen to "play nicely".

I earnestly pray that everything will turn out well in the long run, though I just do not see that happening at this point. At any rate, I wanted to send a reminder to each of you that we should make an effort to play nicely. There are plenty of times where we have every right to do just the opposite of that, but why waste your time on negative energy? That is not what was intended for us in the first place and this world can already suck the life out of you, if you let it. So why not just play nicely? The worst thing that can happen is you end up making a situation better, even if you do not foresee that happening when you first begin that sort of undertaking.

What is up with this world? Why can't we all just play nicely? Instead of always being adversarial and "taking sides", we should just try to get along. Who knows? It just might turn into a positive situation. What's the worst that could happen?