Day Three

by Joshua Farmer

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” -1 John 3:16

Describing love can be difficult but we know it when we see it, especially when we are the recipients.

When I was a freshman in college, I experienced love and felt its warm embrace from the Glasscock family. My parents divorced when I was 12 and by the time I was 14, my relationship with my dad was fractured and nearly non-existent. By the time I was 17, I was living on my own when my mom moved in with her boyfriend. I was good friends with the Glasscock’s son, Jason. They included me in their family meals and would often stop by my house to invite me out to eat with them. For Christmas of 1999, I felt like part of their family as they included me in their family Christmas. They took me shopping and bought me clothes and new shoes (I really like shoes). Unwrapping gifts with their family is something I’ll never forget.

When we receive love like this, it fills our hearts with cheer and makes us feel special. We all want to be loved and experience belonging. When we are loved, it should generate a desire to reciprocate and replicate that love to others. Unfortunately, many times we are so consumed with ourselves we can be in danger of never really putting forth the effort to love others. We can become hoarders of love because of the way it makes us feel.

Confession time: My wife, Paige, and I enjoy watching the Bachelorette. It’s an incredible social experiment I find fascinating. As one might suspect, most of the relationships don’t work out. I have an idea as to why that is. Towards the end of every season, the bachelorette narrows down her choices of who she wants to marry. As the Bachelorette meets the families of the guys she is

dating, the families inevitably ask, “Why my son?” Almost all the responses are centered on how she feels from being in the relationship. “Your son makes me feel great.” “I’ve never felt like this before.” “I want to feel like this forever.”

All the focus is on how the individual is made to feel, not how she wants to enrich the other person’s life and love and serve them well.

Love is serving and sacrificing. Christ loved us when he gave up his rightful place as king to serve us by sacrificing himself so that we might have life. We have been loved extravagantly! Out of an overflow of appreciation for that love, we should, in turn, look to love others selflessly and sacrificially so that they may experience the great love of Christ.

Who has God brought into your life that needs to experience this kind of love? As we focus on the coming of Christ, let us meditate on His example of love and seek to love as he has loved us.

PRAYER

Father, thank you for loving me. Thank you for giving me the perfect example of love that I can model to those you’ve put in my life. Help me to see who you’ve brought into my life that I can love as you’ve loved me.