When you think about love what do you think about? A romantic date, flowers, or maybe your partner. While I’ve been on the race I’ve learned a lot about love. Specifically how to choose loving those around me everyday. Sure that’s something that we all know to be true of love. But how do you actually apply that? How do you actively choose to love people when things get hard? Or how about when things are happening that make you frustrated? How do you choose love in that situation?
Choosing to love people in the hard times isn’t just something that we should try to do, it’s something the Bible tells us to do. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” John 13:35. In fact there are over 100 verses on love in the Bible. Saying that we love people is easy, actively loving people is hard. If it was easy then everyone would do it, we would see love all around us. Because it is hard we sometimes don’t understand what it means to choose loving others.
Choosing to love others looks like both simple and hard things. I’ll use actual examples from my time out to show what I mean. Sometimes it means getting someone you know LOVES chocolate milk some chocolate milk. Maybe it looks like giving an extra long hug because someone is physical touch and just needs it. Perhaps it looks like not hugging someone because you know they don’t like physical touch. Maybe it’s doing a game night with some when you really don’t feel good but what to show you love them.
But those are all easy things, what are the hard things? Well that’s where we mess up sometimes. It can look like many different things, and I have definitely messed this part up before. For a while I thought it meant that if I didn’t like something I’d just ignore it and love the person anyway. But that’s not what we should do if we actually love the person. If something someone does bothers you, give it to God first. Maybe it’s just something you need to work on with God, that’s okay! Work it out and continue to love in the meantime. If it’s something you’re being told needs to be addressed then talk with the person. Let them know why you feel that way and leave it there. That’s it, after that you leave it with God and continue loving them. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes you want to be right or you want to be made to feel better, but that’s not their job. That’s something you have to work on with God and figure out why you feel that way.
Loving others is hard. It’s supposed to be hard, otherwise we would look like everyone else. But choosing to love people is such a beautiful thing and when you live it out then it changes how you look at people. Suddenly you see them in the light of love, and that makes all the difference.
During our time in Costa Rica my squad has had many chances to love each other in easy ways and in hard ways. From spending movie nights snuggled on the couch, to showing love when things don’t go exactly to plan. Choosing love is something we’ve all been able to learn and grow in over the last two months. I guess that’s what being in all squad brings out. Lots of ways to see love and love others.
