Kingdom Comeনমুনা

PRAYER:

God, thank you that you first loved me. Teach me how to love others well. 

READING:

In 1917, a priest named Edward Flanagan opened a home for boys to help the neediest and most vulnerable boys in Omaha, Nebraska. The orphanage took in the homeless, boys with criminal records, and the disabled. One of those boys, Howard Loomis, had polio and wore heavy leg braces. One day, Father Flanagan saw one of the older boys carrying Howard up the stairs. Father Flanagan noticed this kindness and asked him, “Isn’t he heavy?” And the boy replied, “He ain’t heavy, Father… he’s m’ brother.”

This is a beautiful picture of what it looks like to “bear with one another." The phrase, translated as “bear with” in this passage, also means “to hold up.” It brings a picture to our minds of lifting or carrying someone. Like the boy carrying Howard up the stairs, this is what love looks like.

In a way, to love someone is to open ourselves to suffering. Their sadness becomes ours. This is one of the reasons we are so often guarded and slow to love. It can be hard to open ourselves to a relationship that may require from us what could be difficult or inconvenient. 

Yet this is what God asks us to do for each other as a community of Jesus followers. He calls us to love in a way that will cost us. God is not asking us to do anything that he has not first done himself. God did not guard his heart from us. He poured it out generously. Jesus bound up his heart with ours. He made our suffering his suffering. He made our pain his pain. And he asks us to do the same for others. This is part of what it looks like to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” 

REFLECTION:

Think back over your life. When has someone loved you in the same all-out, costly way that Jesus has? If you have access to the person who comes to mind, schedule some time with them this week or next—perhaps a coffee date or a Zoom call. Get together and let them know what a difference their choice to “bear with one another” has made in your life. 

Then imagine someone sitting with you years later and saying the same thing to you.  

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you his eyes and his heart for people. Ask that you would see them the way he sees them and respond the way he responds.