Just Love Each Other

I received an email today from the degree completion program office at my school inviting my husband and I to a free date night. I thought, "Cool!" Then I read a little further and realized they were inviting me to a Relationship Enrichment Seminar, and I thought,  I can sum up all that is needed to be said about relationships in one sentence...

Love each other.

Then the reality of life hit me.

Sometimes we don't know how to love. Laying down our lives for others is not natural to most people, and if we have not been taught what love looks like, how are we to know?

Sometimes we do not love others in the heat of the moment, simply because our own emotions cloud our vision and we cannot see clearly to make the loving choice.

And sometimes, the loving choice is simply not apparent and we are driving in the dark.

It occurs to me that, generally speaking, most people want to do the loving thing. We want to do nice things for other people and we want them to feel better, not worse, after having been around us. So what do we do when we are in those situations that perplex us? What do we do when we want to be loving, but we aren't sure what love looks like right now in this moment?

• Is it loving to give money to beggars on the street, or is it promoting unhealthy living standards?
• Is it loving to give financially to adult children or will doing so promote an unhealthy dependency?
• Is it loving to let a bullying co-worker continue to make demands of you because you want to be nice to people and don't like to cause arguments, or is that simply feeding the person's unhealthy need to prove their worth?

There are no easy answers to questions like these.  And these are but a drop in the ocean of possible scenarios that any one person may face in their lifetime. The truth is, we are going to make mistakes. There are going to be times when we should have walked away, waited until we were thinking more clearly, so that we could whether or not something needed to be said, and what that something might be. There are times in our lives that we are going to look back upon and wish that we had done something differently, or said something that we didn't, or simply sat quietly next to someone instead of rushing off into the busyness of life.

However, the longer I live the more I am convinced that we can keep these moments to a minimum if we stop and ask guidance each time we face a choice. If we are practicing the presence of God, as Brother Lawrence put it, then it will become second nature for us to ask for God's direction. We can be sure that direction will always be in the way of love.

We are given a picture of what love looks like in 1 Corinthians 13. Even many who have never read the Bible are familiar with verses 4-7:

 "Love is patient and kind;

love does not envy or boast;

it is not arrogant or rude.

It does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth."

 

So, back to my original statement about relationships:
     
      Love each other.

After more than thirty years of marriage, it is pretty easy for me to know what loving my husband looks like. I have learned a lot about him and how he works. So it's easy for me to say, in the context of marriage, "Just love each other." Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of three decades of familiarity with most people in my life. So in every relationship, every encounter with another person, I need to be careful with my attitude, with my words, and my actions.

I wish I could say that I have come a long way down the road toward loving all people at all times. The truth is that I am a pretty selfish person, and it takes constant reminders from the Holy Spirit for me to be thoughtful of others. Sometimes I'm not even civil, much less loving. I am grateful that God is patient and kind, and that His amazing grace is sufficient in my moments of need. I want to be like Him. I want to know, innately, how to just love others.