Loving others

Loving others. It’s one of the greatest actions that someone that loves Jesus has the opportunity to do. Our heavenly Father loved us, even before we accepted his love. He pursued us, even while we rejected him. Regardless of our circumstances, and our brokenness he loves us.

Loving others, it sounds easy enough, but I have to honest when I say that we all find it difficult at times. We find it difficult to empathize, we find it difficult to care, especially when what people are going through, the pain and hurt that they are feeling isn’t affecting us personally.

We as followers of Jesus have a responsibility to dwell amongst the most vulnerable, hurting, broken, marginalized people in our society. To show the love that Jesus showed us first, not as a burden of something we have to do but out of the overflow of his love through us, the overflow of gratitude for the love he showed you and me. If we catch on to the love that Jesus had for people, we become willing to do what he did, to be where he was, dwelling amongst those who cry for help, and truly give them the same real genuine love that he gave us.

We can not afford to forget that we were once also broken and lost. We are here not just for us, but for others. We must not continue to hide behind our religious walls but rather break down those walls and be armed with love, empathy, and compassion and go into a broken world that desperately needs Jesus. We as Christians can so easily remove ourselves so much from our world and community, and hide behind our religious walls, so self-absorbed that we end up doing nothing, we give more reason for people to not see Jesus and become unnecessary, unhelpful, and irrelevant to our society.

2020 has been a year like none other, there’s so much going on in our world right now. People are hurting now more than ever. People need Jesus more than ever. As I’ve had many conversations with others about all the hurt going on in our world right now, I’ve encountered such a lack of empathy and compassion in some Christians, it’s like the love vanishes when something doesn’t affect us. And we may try to justify ourselves by saying that whatever insensitive thing we had said was a joke, but some things shouldn’t be said, not at the expense of others who are in desperate need of the love that we know so very dearly.

In being the people that God has called us to be we cannot afford to become so self-absorbed in our lives because then we neglect our responsibility to love others, to serve others, to acknowledge and accept those who have been neglected.

I never want to miss a moment to be able to be amongst the most vulnerable, hurting, broken, marginalized, and oppressed people in our society and share the same love that Jesus has shown me. Because he never turned his back on me, he didn’t abandon me in my brokenness, he gave up his divine privilege as being equal with God to take up the form of a human, to feel the same pain and hurt I feel, and showed the greatest love that could ever be shown.