Love

    What a wonderful difference love makes in our world! And it all started with God. He is the root from which all love springs. John says:

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sings." - 1 John 4:10

    Of course, we all realize that God's love is far beyond any love we know of here on earth. Notice, though, what comparison Jesus uses to convey Hi love for us. I am always amazed: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you"... I can hardly conceive of the idea that Jesus loves me as God the Father loves Him! Yet it is true, for Jesus said it.
    But He goes one step further, asking me to apply this same yardstick to my love. Jesus said:

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." - John 15:12

Now that's difficult! Ask Elizabeth Charles. Sh was born back in the early 1800's, yet I find that what she wrote is as true in the twenty-first century as it was during her lifetime.

"It requires far more of the constraining love of Christ to love our cousins and neighbors as members of the heavenly family, than to feel the heart warm to our suffering brethren in Tuscany or Madeira. To love the whole Church is one thing. To love-that is, to delight in the graces and veil the defects- of the person who misunderstood me and opposed my plans yesterday, whose peculiar infirmities grate on my most sensitive feelings, or whose natural faults are precisely those from which my natural character most revolts, that is quite another."

    Yes, it's hard to love the one who rubes me the wrong way. Yet, that is loving with the grace of God.

"For Christ's love compels us," says Paul (2 Corinthians 5:14). What does His love compel you to do today? How about showing God you love Him by doing something out of the ordinary for somebody who needs encouraging-maybe even someone you don't like? That's loving as Jesus love you.

                                                                                      -Darlene Sala (excerpt)