So there has been a lot of talk about love at our church lately and within our youth group. It's a great thing and probably no big surprise since love is truly one of the bases of christianity. It just seems to me like it has been even more at the forefront of our discussions over the past months between the "Flood of Love Tour" to Alabama and now our 40 days of Community campaign that we are focusing on at our Coffee Shop Talks on wednesday nights. I must say, all of this focus has been very good for myself. You see I have never been that good at expressing my love for others. I would say that I am a loving person, I treat people with respect and am friendly and I always have been but when it has come to saying "I love you" and really letting people who mean something to me that they do, I've been pretty bad at that. I had a very close friend in high school who I kept in touch with through college and still do today. She always teased me about saying "I love you" because she knew I struggled with it. It wasn't until my senior year in college that I found a group of people who really opened me up to the whole "love" thing. I was an orientation leader and my fellow orientation leaders and I grew very close and by the end of the year I loved these people and they loved me. They helped me to learn how to share that love. I was finally able to say it to them and to my friend who always teased me. At the time it wasn't a religious thing...or at least I didn't think it was. But now I look back and realize that the relationships I built that year and the ability to say "I love you" to those people created a whole different level of relationship that I had rarely experienced with other people. I built relationships that became some of the strongest I had ever had. And even the people that i wasn't extremely close with, I respected and trusted. We had built a community based on support and love and the result was a group of 16 young adults who were inseparable, strong, unified, and supportive. If something happened to one of us, it happened to all of us.
I look back on this now and realize how love was the major factor and how important that community was and is in my life. And now as we talk about love in the context of christianity and the importance of community I realize that I just didn't learn how to say "I love you". I learned what it felt like to have people who, no matter what, care about you, will get your back, and pick you up when you are down. This feeling is one that everyone should experience and I believe once you do, you will then crave it and being a loving person will become easier and easier.
So if you haven't felt this, how do you? Well you must initiate the love. If you begin to live a life of love you will be surprised at how quickly others will respond to you. Now I'm not talking about saying "I love you" to everyone you run into (although if you run into an important person in your life, letting them know that will be an awesome thing for you and them). I am talking about small random acts of kindness. Saying hello to the person behind you in line in the grocery store. Holding a door open for a person behind you. Helping someone with heavy bags to their car. Genuinely asking a cashier how their day is going. These are all relationship building things that you can choose to do that show God's love. And when you show that love you will get that love back and it will feel good. And the great thing is, its contagious! You will feel good about it and want to do it again, and the person you showed that love to will feel good to and want to pass it along to someone else! How exciting is this stuff! all of a sudden we are growing the love exponentially!
Now you might be thinking, well if it is exponential then why don't we all just love each other at this point? Well, even though we love the feeling of love we get caught up in ourselves and as quickly as the good feelings come around they can be hijacked by someone cutting you off in traffic, or someone being rude to you. You must make a conscious effort to be a person of love when these situations arise... unfortunately the love wont always be reciprocated. But if you were to have a full day of pure love pouring out of you I bet at the end of the day you would be so filled with love you wouldn't be able to stop smiling and you will have passed that on to more people then you could imagine. But you must choose to do this!
So I'm going to challenge you all and I am challenging myself, pick a day, any day and decide that that day you will choose to love everyone no matter what they do to you. Tie a string to your finger or do something to keep you thinking about it all day. If someone cuts you off in traffic, don't get mad, pray for them, that they arrive safely to their destination. If someone is rude to you, smile and offer them a good day (genuinely care about them) don't get mad. Make extra efforts to build relationships and to show love to everyone you come into contact with. Do this for one full day, choose love, 100%. Nothing else. At the end of the day see how you feel, take some time to reflect on your day and how you handled different situations and how they made you feel. So thats my challenge to you. I plan to do this myself and I will report back to you all as to how it went. And please, post your comments on your experience.
I'd like to leave you with a message from Paul writing to the Corinthians who said, "Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it - because it does!" So if this is the case, what are you waiting for? Give it a shot, what do you have to lose? It's today's new adventure!
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