Love people this way

Reflection

Christian love has a particular shape. It is not simply warm feeling or approval of everything another person does, but a costly, patient commitment to another's good, modelled on how Jesus loved those around him. Paul's famous description in 1 Corinthians 13 lists qualities that sound almost impossible to sustain: patience, kindness, an absence of envy or pride, a refusal to keep a record of wrongs. Read slowly, it becomes a portrait of a way of being that most of us fall short of daily. What makes this kind of love distinctive is that it is not conditional on the other person deserving it. Jesus loved people who misunderstood him, betrayed him, and eventually crucified him, and still prayed for their forgiveness. Loving people this way is rarely comfortable. It asks something of us that our natural instincts resist, yet it remains the clearest mark by which Jesus said his followers would be known.

Questions to sit with

• Who in your life is hardest for you to love well right now?
• What would it look like to love someone without expecting anything back?
• Where do you notice your patience running out with people, and why might that be?

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