Are We Loving?

Are you loving? My answer to this question would be "yes" and I am sure that your answer would be a "yes" as well. I look at my life and I love God, my family, my girlfriend, my friends. These are just the few of the groups of people I love. I am sure these groups are very similar for you.

As I examine my life closer I can see that my life truly fails to love. My brothers and sisters, we all fail to love, some more than others. The groups mentioned above are easy to love. Yes, we may fight with our siblings or our girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband, but we still love them so incredibly much. It would almost feel impossible not to love them and we would feel heartless if we didn't love them.

I look at my daily life and I see all the people passing through and I have to ask myself this question, "Did I love that person?" Unfortunately, the answer to that question is more likely than not "No." If you have come up with the same answer my brothers and sister, this is good news. It means we are not perfect. It means we still need to grow and the best part is that we need to grow in deeper relationship with God.

I have found that it is impossible to love the way we are called to love if we don't have Christ in the center of our lives. Everyone loves family and close friends, but it is hard to love the people that may only be in our lives for only a minute. Those people that are only in our lives for a small amount of time, deserve all the love we have as well. It could be the person who bags your groceries, or your bank teller, or the mailman and obviously the list goes on. Take just those three people. How often do we come in contact with them and when we do, are we loving? Yes, we can be nice to them, but there is a huge difference between being nice and loving. I cannot give you that answer, that is something you will have to figure out.

Jesus challenges us to love our enemies and I think that for some of us, that may be too much to ask at this moment. My brothers and sisters take every chance you possibly can to exercise love. As you continue to love, love will be more natural for you and then it will truly be who you are, but you cannot love without the Love of Christ in you. No matter how hard you try, you cannot put off becoming closer to God and surrendering your life to Him and still think that you can love.

We need to ask God for the ability to love, whether it be that person that spends one minute in our life or it could be that person who we cannot stand. Ask God for the Grace to love. I promise you will be richly rewarded, but I cannot promise that a life like this will not hurt and will be easy.