Last week I wrote about how God created everything in the universe, plus He created us. Out of everything that He has ever created, or will ever create, we are his most beloved works of art. How do we know this? Because he made us in his own image and even blew air into our lungs. He is part of us. We weren’t made just to be loved, though. We were made TO Love. That’s part of us being a representative of God on earth; we are made to love one another as he loves us.

“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, ‘Techer, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.'”

Matthew 22: 34-40 (NABRE)

When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment he didn’t say that it was to keep the Sabbath holy or that you shouldn’t eat meat on Fridays. No, he said that you will love each other as God loves you. Jesus even tells the parable about the Good Samaritan who saved a man who had been severly beaten and left for dead. Did the good Priest, a man of the cloth, stop to help the critically injured man? No, because if he had touched the man the Priest would have been considered “unclean” and wouldn’t be able to enter the Temple. Do you think God really cared if the Priest was “unclean?” No! He wanted the Priest to help his fellow man by loving him enough to stop and get him help.

Even when we mess up, God still loves us. Even when that Priest walked by the man in the ditch, God still loved him. He loves us so much that he gives us so many chances to ask forgiveness. None of us are beyond redemption. We may have to pay the consequences of our sins, but we can still be redeemed and know that God loves us. Have you ever heard somebody describe their child as an “oops”? How many people grew up being told that they weren’t planned and therefore they were an accident? I wish that parents wouldn’t tell their children such things because NONE of us were accidents! God knows us all by name and He even knew us before he knit us in our mother’s womb. God gave you life and put you on this earth at this point in time for a purpose. NOBODY was an accident! If that were the case, do you think he would have given his only son to die for our sins so that we might be reunited with Him? Absolutely not. None of us are really worthy of that kind of love, and yet God gives it to us every single second.

That’s the problem with addiction and listening to the negative voices. They convince us that we have no purpose and that we are worthless. That there isn’t a God and that nobody will ever love you or can ever love you. Don’t listen to the lies! I know it’s hard to drown out and sometimes it’s a battle just to keep from falling into the pits of despair, but always fall back on the fact that God loves you no matter what! Because you are redeemable. Because you are lovable. Because you are a child of God and he lovingly created you to be the person that you are right now at this time.

I want to ask you to please make sure you pick up a copy of Rescued; The Unexpected and Extraordinary News of the Gospel by Fr. John Riccardo. Read it and take it to heart. We need to be the Good Samaritans for those people who have been beaten up and left bloody by the negative voices. It is our job to pick them up and show them the healing Word of God, for the Truth will set you free!