Love one another

It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t prefaced with “You should probably..” or followed up with “If you feel like it.” It was a command that was actually followed up with “as I have loved you.”

Who is the speaker? Jesus.

What did he want us to do? Love each other as he had loved us.

It seems simple enough, until you think about what that actually means. I feel like our society has corrupted the idea of love. We think love is that thing we’re feeling when someone special makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside or that showing love is saying “I love you” at the close of a phone conversation. I have reason to believe that this is nowhere near the kind of love that Jesus was talking about. I think Jesus was talking about the messy kind of love. The kind of love we avoid because it takes too much time or makes us too uncomfortable.

Why do I think that that’s the kind of love that Jesus was talking about? Because of the following statement, “as I have loved you.” Jesus’ kind of love was not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. We have been influenced to believe that since we have grown up with images of him with long flowing  hair, perfectly manicured nails and always carrying or cuddling with a baby sheep. But, the Jesus I have come to know was a little more passionate than that. That Jesus was the Jesus who corrected people at the constant risk of being perceived as…well a terrorist basically. He didn’t do so to prove his intelligence, he did so because he cared enough to make sure people were making informed decisions about their lives. He loved them. That Jesus was the Jesus who hung out with people who weren’t deemed worthy by society. He loved them. That Jesus was the same Jesus who died on a cross for us, people who reject him daily. He loved us then and he loves us now. These few examples are the reasons why I believe that in that command, Jesus isn’t telling us to pursue the warm, fuzzy and squeaky clean type of love. I believe he wants us to be messy, take social risks and get uncomfortable for others.

All of that on paper is well and good, but how do we apply that practically? I’m going to be starting a small series on love and ways to show love practically, kind of devotional style if you would. I don’t want to place this all in one post because I think it’ll end up being a book. For those of you who have been following along with my writing you know I don’t mind writing paragraph after paragraph of thoughts, but I’ve decided to be kind and try to keep these particular segments about love short and to the point.

So. Onward. Practically in Love will be the tile of this series. Each post along with this series will be breaking down a way to show love practically. I will try to post these on Sunday nights or Monday mornings (minus my starter post) so that we have something to focus on during our week.

I am looking forward to this series and hope you are too!

Thanks for joining me on this adventure! As is the norm, if you have any questions, comments or concerns in regards to this series, this post or my blog in general, please don’t hesitate to let me know below!

See you next time!