Everyday Love

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” - John 15:12

I recently heard two people make almost identical statements.  One person was referring to the 9/11 attacks and the first responders who ran toward the burning, collapsing buildings.  The other was recalling her own experience of sprinting across a busy highway to get to the scene of a collision.  Both had reached the same conclusion: why hadn’t anyone felt the need to determine the personal beliefs and political affiliation of the victims before rushing to help them?   

In emergency situations, it seems that we don’t stop to evaluate people’s worth.  Instead, something else takes over and we move irrationally toward the stranger, even at the risk of our own safety.  It’s humanity at its best.  But it raises further questions.

Why do we live so differently in our day-to-day life, choosing to live divided and contentious? Why do we fear the other and write people off without ever bothering to hear their stories?  And why don’t we experience similar reactions to victims of long-term crises?  How do we turn a blind eye toward the millions of people falling victim to famine and war in our world?

Perhaps it’s because it’s harder to love in small and ordinary ways.  Perhaps it’s because we have time to consider the cost of our selfless acts.  Or perhaps it’s harder to love the one whose name we don’t know or whose hand we cannot physically hold.

But Jesus commanded us to love each other as He has loved us.  And while He did lay down His life in a final crisis, He spent far more of His life loving people in small and ordinary ways.  He didn’t shy away from the sick and broken or those who were different from Him.  Instead, He moved toward them in love, at great cost to Himself.

For Reflection: What would it look like for us to follow Him into living this kind of love, not just in life’s crises but in the ordinary and every day?  What is holding us back?

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