Choosing Love

“It is our job to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.” – Thomas Merton

We are called and created to love others. Love is a deliberate decision – you choose every day to love those around you. But, are we truly loving those around us, or simply waiting to see if they deserve it – if they have earned it?

Love requires us to give of ourselves. Choosing to care for another’s needs and burdens over our own. But we cannot love of our own abilities. We can try, but our love always comes up short, because our love is selfish. True, selfless love must come from Christ. When we try on our own, we fail, get frustrated, give up, and leave. We cannot love others without first being eternally loved – loved by the One who died to see us live. Loved by the one who knit us together in the womb of our mothers. The One who shows us how to sacrifice and love others.

First John chapter 4 verses 10 – 12 says this:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The chapter goes on to say this in verses 19 – 21:

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

We are the mirrors of His love. We are the hands and feet of Christ. Not just today, but every day.