You want me to love who?

Everyone knows that God wants us to love others. Most of us are familiar with the two great commandments of the bible the first being “Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your mind and all your strength” and the second command being.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12:31 says of these two commandments “There is no commandment greater than these.”

Sometimes loving our neighbors, friends, and family is not a difficult command to follow, because these or some of the people who have loved us when we thought that we were unlovable. However, the command of loving others goes even further than this. In Matthew 5:44 Jesus says to us “Love your enemies, Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.”  According to this we are not just called to love those who are loveable, but we are called to love the unlovable, those that hate us, those who do not like us, those who have hurt us. This has been an issue I have been dealing with lately. There is a person in my life that I know doesn’t like me, and will reject me if I try to reach out to her, but I am being called to love her anyway.  This is a very challenging task. It’s difficult to love someone who you know will not show you that love back, but I believe that this a good opportunity for us to search our hearts and determine our true motives. It’s normal to want to receive love from others, but if we only love others so that we can get love back from them, then our hearts are in the wrong place.

I don’t have to ask you if there is someone in your life that is hard to love. I’m sure that as you are reading this people are coming to your mind, maybe an old friend you had a disagreement with, a difficult family member, a cranky neighbor, an annoying boss or coworker. I challenge you to do everything you can to love that person. Treat this person with kindness, even when they don’t do the same for you. Pray for that person daily. Pray for grace to deal with that person. Remember that we are called to  love even the unlovable.