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Hey there.
I’ve been on this “ kick” about LOVE lately. It’s like every devotion I open or podcast that comes up on my feed relates to this topic. I find myself lapping up morsels of wisdom about Love wherever I can get it . I’m thinking maybe it has to do with the fact that within recent months we have had a major election and social media and new outlets have been in overdrive. The news has been reporting in overload and what’s being reported is almost always negative!
I know I’ve been intentionally trying to counter all that “stuff” and fixing my mind on the one thing that sums up what’s missing in all of it: LOVE.
Holidays are coming up and we get to Love more than ever. Some of us have the Norman Rockwell picture and then others, that picture is not quite as serene.
I read this sweet story in one of my recent devotions.
In 1917, a priest named Edward Flanagan opened a home for boys to help the neediest and most vulnerable boys in Omaha, Nebraska. The orphanage took in the homeless boys with criminal records, and the disabled. One of those boys, Howard Loomis, had polio and wore heavy leg braces.
One day, Father Flanagan saw one of the older boys carrying Howard up the stairs. Father Flanagan noticed this kindness and asked him, “Isn’t he heavy?” And the boy replied, “He ain’t heavy, Father… he’s m’ brother.”
Cue the song by The Hollies and sappy tears! This is a beautiful picture of what it looks like to “bear with one another.” In a way, to love someone is to open ourselves to suffering. Their sadness becomes ours. This is one of the reasons we are so often guarded and slow to love.
It can be hard to open ourselves to a relationship that may require from us what could be difficult or inconvenient.
Yet this is what God asks us to do for each other as a community of Jesus followers. He calls us to love in a way that will cost us. God is not asking us to do anything that he has not first done himself. God did not guard his heart from us. He poured it out generously. Jesus bound up his heart with ours. He made our suffering his suffering. He made our pain his pain. And he asks us to do the same for others. This is part of what it looks like to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1-3 NIV
Praying that you can grin and “bear it” this Holiday Season as you might have some people that are hard to love.
God, thank you that you first loved me. Teach me how to love others well.