Ted’s sermon last week has had me thinking about people being created in God’s image (even the ones that are not easy to like) which this week’s verses reinforce.
Matthew 22:34-40. 34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
It’s easy to love people from a distance but it requires an investment of time, energy, and attention to really get to know someone. Initially we tend to build up and see the parts of a person we like (or don’t like) but it requires grace, compassion, patience, and maturity to truly love another person. This makes the people closest to us much more difficult to deal with than people we idealize, but God values us, the real us, more than any idealized version of people we make up in our head. It is so important that he places it second only to loving him.
This week, consider how much time you give to the people in your life; The people whose lives you can make a genuine difference in. Then, make that call, run that errand, take that lunch, write that note or do whatever it is that God directs you to do.