Epistle of Paul to the Romans 12:1-21
12:1 Show your love and gratitude God by respecting yourself, by always striving to grow in wisdom and health and compassion. Let your life be a testimony of your spiritual alignment with His will. He has given you the body which houses your soul, appreciate the living miracle that you are. Nourish yourself so that your body and mind and soul and life are purposeful in compassion and wisdom. You can do so much in on the earth, become a fellow-worker with God. He gave you all of the tools and materials to do so.
12:2 Disentangle yourself from the ideals and values the world has placed on life, things like: power, fame, and wealth. Divest the gossip and the greed, the discontentment and impatience. You do not want to be shaped and molded by the world because the world's gods (power, fame, and wealth) are responsible for adversity and disparity, pain and suffering.
Let yourself be transformed by God, renewed in spirit with a new perspective and understanding on life and compassion and creation. Through your spirituality, you will continue to develop in perspective and wisdom: a new fascination with all life, earth, and all plant and animal, element and atom.
Living your life with spiritual wisdom and compassion will be a testimony of good. Your just acts and impartial empathy will speak of God's perfect love: untainted and uninfluenced, abundant and wholehearted.
12:3 Be humble. Our bodies and our souls are a miracle, but what makes them miraculous is not that they are better than any other life (they are not) but that they share the elements of all life. Realize your spiritual but also elemental kinship with all plant and animal and planet and universe.
God has love and faith and hope and appreciation for each of His creations. Our creator is humble and has modestly created brilliant life in every crevice of the universe. We are loved not ruled. We should live with love and follow the example given to us. We should not feel superior because all life is cherished by God, all life is curated and protected with precision and love.
Humans aren't exactly appreciative and protective of our home: earth. Yet God has promised to restore the earth (as we read in a previous chapter). He will restore the earth because He loves life, all flora and fauna.
12:4 Our body systems are a collaborative effort. Each organ of our body contributes to our ability to be alive: and thought each organ is different, each is essential; a part of the whole. God wishes for us to understand ourselves in our earth (and also spiritually) in a similar way: we each appear to exist separately but we are parts of a larger, comprehensive member. Together we are alive, together we are life. Our different personalities and talents and interests and short-comings allow for disparate lessons and expressions and opportunities, joys and laughter in the world. Plants and even distant planets contribute to our ability to be alive. (Thanks, Jupiter for absorbing all those explosive space rocks before they arrive here!)
Our scientific journey here has only begun; there is so much we do not understand. God has created so many components which enable us to be safe and alive... unrealized organs contributing to the life within our own planet and body.
12:5 So yes, we and plants and other animals are different but we are each equally important. Our differences help us to contribute to life rather than to stand out from it. The philosophy of God, manifested by Jesus, is alive within us. As God's children, we have Him within us. He created the bee and beetle, tulip and tree, He created you and He created me... together we are a family.
12:6 When we develop our spiritual relationship with God, He is able to activate within us our specific potential. He has generously apportioned to each of us talent and ability but it is up to us to seek it, accept it and hone and share our skill. We are each so capable of changing our worlds if only we accept the opportunity, the blessing to do so. Appreciate all life, plant and people and everything else for their differences. God has has allowed us to be authentically unique because He values and finds beauty in manifestations and expressions of life.
No matter what we love or are curious about, it is all valued by God. He understands the forms of creation humans have expressed: dancers and painters, writers and comedians, teachers and scientists, kind friends and attentive fathers, animal lovers and adventurers... no matter what you like, and even if you don't know what you like, God wants to help you find it and thrive within it. To make the world better, deeper, more colorful through what you like and what you do and who you are.
12:7-8 We have so many varying gifts and abilities: some people are naturally, especially patient and kind. Some people are good listeners and shoulders to lean on, some people are deeply forgiving or empathetic or cheerful or studious... there is a need in the world for all of those types of people (and more!).
We are contributes to life, enhancers of it. Develop your faith, establish yourself in authentic spirituality, learn and grow and then gift the world with who you are.
12:9 This verse begins a series of valuable advice on how to navigate life:
- Let love be without hypocrisy: Be open and appreciated to all of humanity, our diversity is beautiful. People around the world want the same things, no matter how differently they express them: to be happy, to laugh, to have a healthy family, to eat yummy food and do fun things. Do not be a hypocrite, allow others to pursue the same happiness you want for yourself.
- Abhor what is evil: Abhor. Hate with passion what is unjust, violent and evil. Use your passion for compassion and justice to fuel your actions against what is evil. Remove it from your life and help to remove it from others' lives. Do not dabble with the qualities which lead to evil: jealously, greed, impatience, hypocrisy, hate... they will only drag you down and extinguish the happiness and peace in your life.
- Cling to what is good: Wrap yourself with goodness, wrap goodness around yourself. When you see happiness, sustain it, contribute to it, nourish it. Celebrate all forms of joy. Tether yourself to patience and peace and acceptance.
12:10
- Love and appreciate people: Love people as if their happiness and health is directly related to your own, because it is and should be. Be honored to contribute to someones betterment; it's a blessing to be able to help another.
12:11
- Do not be lethargic or apathetic: Be passionate, be purposeful. Foster a happy, productive spirit and work with God to make this earth better and brighter.
12:12
- Rejoice in hope: Hope is essential to our lifeline. Hope allows us to be imaginative, to dream and plan for ways to make life better. Hope allows us to rejoice in our lives, all of the potential and possibilities, little jewels that are cemented into our path (even the parts we haven't reached yet).
- Be patient in tribulation: Life is an instruction if we allow it to be. We learn and subsequently grow after experiencing something we did not understand. We learn how to react better the next time it finds us or to avoid it all together. We learn the value of love and justice. Be patient and allow yourself to be honed and sculpted into something stronger, wiser and more perceptive. Persevere because you have perseverance within you.
- Continue steadfastly in prayer: Maintain your relationship with the source of your life, breathing, and beat of heart: our creator, our God. Constantly, consistently communicate with Him: both your joys and your trials. He will help you, lead you... He will make you life and make you brave. Continue steadfastly with Him because with our permission, He's going to establish a beautiful, purposeful path for us to walk throughout our lives.
12:13
- Support and help and work with people who dedicate their lives to others: We must appreciate and value (not revere) people who are compassionate and selfless with their lives. We must join them, become them. For example: Paul who is speaking to us now. He has written down for us these beautiful life lessons, let's share them and help him to reach more and more people.
12:14
- Bless your adversaries: Why? Bless them because you deserve it. You deserve to have people in the world who receive God's word and are changed by it. Cursing a person will never change them, and if they are evil, they need to change. You deserve to live in a world where people cast blessings and hopes for others rather than curses and ill-wishes. Bless them because your compassion moves God to try even harder to work with them and lead them out of their darkness.
12:15
- Share the expressions of others: This is empathy. Care about people so much that whatever they experience, you experience with them. Never let them be alone when they need a friend.
12:16
- Be Humble: Forget about wealth and fame and keeping up with the Jones', as they say. The real value is in life. Feel neither superior nor inferior to others: each of us is loved and has an equal right to be here.
12:17
- Do not be vengeful: No one benefits from retaliation. Anyway, it's hypocritical to be vengeful. If someone hurt you by because unjust or unkind, why would you stoop down to their level? You're better than unkindness. Do not allow pain and frustration to fester inside of you, it's unhealthy. Remember always that you are important, you are unique and beautiful and capable and deserving of love. If anyone disrespects that, remove yourself out of their darkness. You are a light, meant to shine not to be extinguished. Ask God to help that person so that that person does not continue to hurt others as they have hurt you and move on! Your best vengeance is that one day they wake up and realize the pain they caused and then become better because of it, motivated to change because they sincerely wish to atone for their past behavior.
12:18
- Live peaceably: Situations and conditions are not always in your control, but do what you can not to cause or contribute to friction between another person. Be fair. Be kind. If they refuse to reciprocate, walk away.
12:19
- Allow God to handle evil: Those who are against you will never triumph. God loves you and He pays particular attention to you and how people interact with you. He's going to completely remove evil from your life; living spiritually with Him, nothing less than wonder and love and compassion will be able to reach you. God is disturbed and hurt by injustice and unkindness on the earth; nothing goes unnoticed by Him and everyone and everything will have to speak for themselves. (For most of us, that's a moment to look forward to, to look back at all the good we did and stand grateful for all the opportunities we had to do it).
12:20
- Do not succumb to evil's level: How much more guilty is a person and how much more compassionate are you when you do not succumb to their level? The kinder you are, the more vehement God is in protecting you. Anyone against a child of God should not dare mess with them!
12:21
- Overcome evil with good: Work not to be irascible. There is a lot wrong in the world, much disparity, much injustice... do not let it cloak you or you view of humanity in darkness. Do not be tempted to join it because it encircles you. You have power over it, no matter how prevalent it seems. Most importantly: force and inspire, foster and promote good so that it clobbers evil, stifles evil, boldly forces evil into a cower. You have so much potential here, so many opportunities to be instrumental in the betterment of the earth and humanity! Look around your life, you were placed where you are for a reason. There is work to do and you are able.
