Reflections: Love One Another

Well, it's Valentine's Day - a day to celebrate love!

I want to focus on love in a setting of friendships and family relationships, because it's more consistently applicable, and it's much more relevant to me.

1 John 4:7 - "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." 

It all starts with the example of perfect love. God has shown us love -- love that is incomprehensible, love that is boundless, love that can never be surpassed -- by conquering death that we might live eternally with him. How can we not love him, considering what he has done?

In order to show our love, though, we must "keep his word," as John 14:23 says. The first and greatest command is to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second is to love one's neighbor as oneself. And also...

1 John 4:21 - "Whoever loves God must also love his brother." 

Showing love isn't always easy. Sure, sometimes it is -- especially when the person in question is being/has been loving toward you. But more often, it isn't.

 1 John 15:13 - "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends." 

This is the ultimate example of love. But you may not have the opportunity to literally give your life for someone else. Then what? 

Show love in and through the small things, those that happen every day. Choosing to do something for a sibling. To clean up something when it's not your turn or responsibility. (Yeah, I'm still working on that one...) To help a sibling with things like spelling a word or determining the proper way to work a math problem. 

And perhaps one of the most important choices of all to make... forgiveness. Forgiving the one who made noise while you were trying to do schoolwork, the person who took your library book without asking, the one who left his dishes out after a meal for you to clean up. Choosing not to snap at the person whistling the same tune over and over again. (Guilty! I want to be forgiven of that -- shouldn't I forgive it in others?)

Because we're called to forgive our brothers up to seventy times seven times. Four hundred and ninety times isn't the total limit, yearly limit, monthly limit, weekly limit, or even daily limit. (Even if it feels like it.) Instead, forgiveness must be unconditional and boundless. 

Much like God's forgiveness and love for us, wouldn't you say?

1 John 4:10-11 - "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love another."