“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”John 3:16 is a verse that we are taught in our early Christian life. However, it takes maturity to really understand what that verse is saying. To give a part of you for someone else is a very difficult thing. God did it without a thought and Jesus came willingly to not only die but to show us through love how to live.
Matthew 23:37 said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” As I read those words I could feel Jesus’ pain. His love for them was palpable. His heart broke for the people who could not or would not hear his message. How sad that people would rather condemn than comfort, hurt than help, destroy than build. Sadder still that it is that way today.
Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love one another. Love is a four letter word that gets tossed around like it’s nothing. We seem to have no idea of what love really is. We need to look at what real love is. John 3:16 shows a father giving his son to bring his other children into the fold. Jesus tried to show how to live a life of love and that example still prevails today.
Mary J Blige had a very popular song titled “Real Love.” We often fool ourselves into thinking that we have real love. We say that we have unconditional love. But the truth is that our love is sometimes conditional. The only one whose love is always totally unconditional is God. He never turns away from us. It is often us who turn away. I wondered how God could be jealous as it so often states in the Old Testament. What I had forgotten was that God loves us so deeply that it has to hurt when those He wants to love Him turn away. How could a God with no emotion create such emotional beings? Simple…God is emotion. He feels all that we feel. He hurts when we hurt one another and ourselves. This is the message that Jesus brought. John 13:34-35 says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
So the real test of it all is, do we love one another as Jesus loves us? It hardly seems as if we are. But there are some extraordinary people out there who do love with a Jesus kind of love. Clara Hale is one who comes to mind. She opened her heart and home to a mother on drugs and a drug addicted baby in 1969 at the age of 64. Over the years she helped many children who were not only born addicted to drugs but some were infected with HIV. She died at the age of 87 in 1992 but Hale House continues to provide assistance to children and families in need. She truly exhibited what Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, ““The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Queen Esther spoke the words, “If I perish, I perish. She knew that what she was about to do was against the law but she put the fate of her people ahead of her own. What love! She walked a path that was not easy but the love she had for her people was more than enough to move her legs when they would not. How many of us would be willing to do the same?
We all need to ask ourselves one question…are we making a difference or just taking up space. I never want to be one that takes up space. When it’s all said and done, I pray that I have made a difference on this planet and in someone’s life. I pray that I am able to follow Jesus’ command to love others as He loves me.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Proverbs 25:11
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