Today’s reading: Psalm 17; 1 John 4
John’s focus and teaching on loving one another here is challenging to me.
People tend to be a lot harder for me to love than God is. I love, for example, spending time with God in the mornings. I get up earlier than the rest of my family every day because I know I need that time with Him before I start being a husband, father, co-worker, friend, etc. It’s really a non-negotiable for me to get my time with Him each day, or I just really don’t like the person I otherwise am. But, over the years of developing the habit, I have come to love, enjoy, and cherish the time I spend with the Lord, coming out of it refreshed, built up, and excited to live the day for Him!
And then people come into the picture…
Ironically, as I was sitting down to write about this, my youngest showed up downstairs asking me to change his poopy diaper. Then one of my other kids woke up early and was wanting me to come with her into the kitchen to make eggs for breakfast (she’s just learning to cook on her own and I’ve told her I want an adult in there with her for now so she doesn’t burn or hurt herself while she’s still getting experience at it). I had been enjoying my time in the Word, and my time thinking and praying about this post, and I still had a good 15 minutes left of time that was supposed to be uninterrupted, but then here came the interruptions. And as I felt myself getting frustrated about it, I was struck by just how ironic it was given the chapter I was reading and what I was planning to write about from it.
But the fact of the matter is, John's right. I might enjoy my personal time with the Lord, but my capacity to love Him isn't any greater than my capacity to love in general, and that capacity to love is built, strengthened, and expanded in relationships with other people. On top of that, if someone claimed to love me, but then treated my children terribly, or just got annoyed every time my children were around, would I really consider them to love me? My children are part of the package for someone who wants to have any kind of relationship with me, so they can't truly love me and hate my children at the same time.
I think it tends to feel easier with God because I can approach Him on my schedule and on my terms. I'm the one that chooses when I want to sit down with Him, rather than Him popping up asking to do something when I'm in the middle of something else. God doesn't call me to ask if I can help Him work on His house or help Him move on a day when I've got less important but much more enjoyable plans. God doesn't really really want to tell me about His project at school while I'm working from home and clearly running a meeting at the moment. God doesn't expect me to stay up late talking about His day when I'm tired and just want to go to bed. And if I want to ignore God for a day or two because there's a lot going on and I just want to veg out in front of the tv during my few minutes of downtime, I can do that.
Loving God feels so much easier than loving people, but the reality is that I'm not truly loving Him when I'm not actively loving other people. Loving God's people is a very important way that we express our love for God. Loving other people well shows that our love for God is genuine, and not just a matter of convenience. Loving other people forces us to put our money where our mouth is and actually prioritize what He says is a priority.
Loving other people is hard, but it is part and parcel with loving God. We cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters, His children, whom we have seen. Some days I would very much prefer it to not work this way, but God's the one that gets to decide how it works, not me. My job, if I really want to love Him more, is to learn to love His people.
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