Love God and your neighbors.

Love is more than hearts and flowers. It goes far beyond any romantic notion. Love is not just a sentimental feeling. For Christians, love means pleasing God and our neighbors. How do we love God? Loving God takes effort on our part. We obey His commandments. We pray. We live our lives in a way that is pleasing to Him. Jesus teaches us that way; He teaches us to live in service to others. This is not always easy, but the concept is pretty straightforward.

How do we love our neighbors? This gets a bit more complicated, especially when my neighbor doesn’t agree with me, acts differently than I do, or talks “funny”. It can be true when I think my neighbor is wrong. The idea of loving my neighbor is sometimes complicated when my neighbor is not like me.

Loving our neighbor may take a lot of effort on our part. It involves tolerance, open-mindedness, compromise, consideration, communication, and a willingness to help one another. Jesus teaches us the way: we must be merciful with our neighbors just as God, our Father, is merciful with us. This is pleasing to God. By loving our neighbor, we are loving God, too.