How to Love

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

It does not envy.

It does not boast.

It is not proud.

It is not rude.

It is not self seeking.

It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil.

Love rejoices with the trush.

Love always protects.

It always trusts.

It always hopes.

It always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Sometimes I like coming up with excuses for why I can dislike someone. Let’s be honest, it’s a little too easy to find reasons not to be friends with difficult people sometimes.

Recently though, I realized that is a complete lie to believe that that is acceptable.

If, as a follower of Jesus, I am commanded to love everyone, then that means that I am literally meant to love everyone.

To choose kindness, patience, selflessness, humility, trust, fierce protectiveness, longsuffering, and perseverance in the way that I act towards them, treat them, and talk about them.

To choose to not be self seeking in a friendship is such a counter cultural thing. I think that in American culture we choose our friends based on what we can get out of that friendship.

How does they treat me? How do they affirm me? How do they make me feel? How often do they say yes to me?

But what if I chose to offer the hand of friendship to anyone, and not based on my human standards, but based on the standards that Jesus set? What if I decided to love people well just because people need to be loved well, and the more difficult the person, the more their need is.

Not to say that boundaries are wrong, or that we shouldn't have friends who do love us well. We need that. But I do feel challenged to learn to better love the people that I would naturally rather avoid.

Sometimes I like to think about eternity. It’s an idea that our brains cannot comprehend.

No end.

Compared to that, my life here is such a tiny little blip. It is so small. So short. Too short to not choose to radically love. Too short to put my own desires above my call to serve and love others.

So God, help me learn how to love. I’m not perfect. I will mess up. But change my heart to look more like Yours. Help me to see what you see when I look into the eyes of the angry, the unkind, the obnoxious, the socially awkward, the smelly, the ugly, the broken. Give me Your compassion and help me to be a friend to the forgotten.

You say that You are near to the low and to the broken—that when we love them, we love You. So help me to love You well…