The thing about love is that it’s really, really easy to do when it’s easy to do (duh). When we are in the honeymoon period of any relationship. When we agree. When we genuinely like a person. When we aren’t disrupted, challenged, inconvenienced. Loving as Jesus loves us is so much harder because Jesus delights in us—all of us. And some days we can’t even delight in ourselves, never mind the people we don’t much like. For Jesus, love isn’t only something that we do, it’s part of who we are. We love others as Jesus first loves us, and that means being disrupted and interrupted. It means loving not only when it’s easy, but more importantly when it’s hard, and when we’d really rather not. Love, embodied, is trusting that same love Jesus already has for us, even when we aren’t easy to love, is freely given, and it is the love that is within us to give to others.
God, you command us to love one another as you love us but sometimes that is a hard ask. Help us know the love you already have and give to us. Help us know and embody that love so that we can share it with others. Amen. —