Last week I wrote about the calling upon our lives to love one another and to love hard. If you’re anything like me, loving all the time can seem exhausting and well…umm…maybe fake? Come on, we can’t be sweet all of the time! And surely it’s impossible to do it perfectly twenty-four seven.
God has been showing me that love can look very different than what the world tells me love is. He’s been showing me that love can look like anguish. After all, the greatest love that we have ever known died on the cross, right? That’s solid truth. The problem is it’s the opposite of what most of us picture love to be. He’s been showing me that loving someone can mean biting my tongue. To keep to myself if it’s not uplifting. The act of not speaking my initial feelings can be loving my brother and sister well. He has showed me that enduring is love. And the list goes on and on.
The bible defines love as this:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. -1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Loving someone well looks different every second of every day. It means that there are numerous ways to love someone instead of the exhaustive image that most of us have been fed by the world.
Most of all, to love someone well is to mirror Jesus to them. To live showing others his character. The Word tells us God is love. Go ahead and replace the word “love” in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 with “God” and see how it moves your heart. Then you will be better able to grasp God’s character, which in turn, will grant you the grace to love others the way that He loves us.
That is loving hard.
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