Contemplation, part one

Divine Love casts no judgment.

This is hard to accept because it isn’t the way I have been conditioned to look:

When I look at myself, I am constantly judging.

When I look at others people, my first impulse is to judge or evaluate, and I keep doing it                      until I become aware of what I am doing----and only then am I able to stop,

                                                with God’s help,

                                and hopefully, learn to accept others for who they are.

This doesn’t mean that I am unaware of any good or evil that may be in them; it means that I see them with the good and with the evil, and I simply let it be, for it is not up to me  to judge.

It is up to God to judge, but His Son tells us that “I am sent not to condemn but to save.”

And he looks on us with love.

Search the Gospels and find places where Jesus looks with love, no matter what may be going on in a person’s life. I think especially of the rich young man who wanted to follow Jesus but who walked away sadly because he was too bound up in his materialism. And yet, it says, Jesus looked on him with love. He saw the man’s struggle. He saw how the man was losing the battle at that particular time. He did not judge or grow impatient. He simply looked with love. I often wonder what happened to that young man as he got older. What effect did the look of love have on him?

Can we ever learn to see that way? In a way that confers love on someone or something?

Can we ever learn to look contemplatively?