Love

1 John 3:16,18

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

What does it really mean to love? To honestly, truthfully, and unconditionally love my fellow brothers and sisters around me. I used to believe that love is our way of interacting with those around us in a way that conflict is not an issue, that our community is a "happy," problem free environment. I've been challenged by this passage with what love really means. It's not just the words I choose and the way I respond to others in conflict but the very state of my heart as I interact with and live in community with those around me.

To think of love as Jesus Christ laying down his life for us, and him calling us to do the same, I realize that I fall very short in my understanding of what it means to really love. I realize that to love those around me I must be able to recognize and acknowledge the very worth that Jesus has placed in each of their lives. I can sometimes get caught up in this idea that because God is doing so many different works in each of our lives that that somehow puts us on different levels or planes than others around us. This thinking is so wrong.

Last night I was able to begin to see this truth, that God has placed in each of us a worth that cannot be measured or ranked by any standard. We are all equal, truly equal in God's eyes. What a freedom it is to understand this truth, because when we do it begins to free us from any expectations or judgements by our own self or by others. And this frees us to love others. To recognize and respond to this life seeing it as a bunch of unique people created and valued by God who are called to live together and share life regardless of how very different we are.

I realize that as I am in a community of believers with different interests than my own, I can still invest and be all present in engaging in the things they enjoy without fear of having to change who I am and what I enjoy. I have the freedom to be who I am and participate in who they are. I have the freedom to love them only as I enter into the reality that God is doing a work in my heart that is transforming the way I view this life and the community of believers he has placed me with. There is something beautiful about being truly interested in seeing and sharing in the work of God in other people's lives and I want this to be true of every person I come in contact with. I find it a profound mystery how God has chosen to connect our ability to love other people with knowing Him deeper. How in loving and serving others, we are learning what it means to love and serve God. That's cool.