Love Deeply
The other day I was at my church helping to set up for an event when out of nowhere I felt tiny arms wrap around me in a hug. I glanced down to see a little girl that I had never seen before. She looked up at me and said something which both surprised me and stuck with me: “I love you… what’s your name?”
It didn’t surprise me that a little girl I had never met would tell me she loved me. It seems that children have a lot easier time loving strangers and, of course, speaking anything that comes to their minds. But it was the order of her thoughts that struck me as something beautiful. Her first response was to tell me she loved me, and THEN she thought to ask my name. To her, she knew that loving people was an important thing to do, and who they were or what they were called were irrelevant formalities that would not alter her firm choice that she would love that person.
This is the call God has put on our lives. To love first and above all else. In 1 Corinthians 13:13 God tells us,
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Love is at the core of who God is, so therefore to truly know and have an intimate relationship with God we must first love those around us.
1 John 4:8 says, “whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
In short, by loving others we are emulating the essence of God, and growing in closer union with Him. This is our call as Christians, to follow as closely as we are able to the life which Jesus lived here on earth. By doing this, we are showing both our faithfulness to follow a life that is different from the world, and making a choice to love all those around us--even our enemies.
Love is declared to be the greatest attribute of God. In 1 Peter 4:8, it says,
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
Love has the power to eliminate much, if not all, the sin we struggle with. Just think… Those unkind words you were about to speak to a person because you were frustrated would halt because your love for them would stop those words from departing from your mouth. The temptation to steal is gone, because of your respect and love for the owners of that object. Your lies to get you out of uncomfortable situations are put to rest because of your love for that person, and your own selfish desires are put away. Every sin we commit is a direct blow and a show of disrespect towards God, because he despises evil. But love is the polar opposite of evil and it is what God wants so strongly for our lives.
Remembering later what that girl had said to me, I pondered the reality of what our lives would look like if we were able to look at someone first with love, rather than judgment or dismissal as we often do. In 1 John 4:16, it says,
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”