Love

And 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. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22: 37-39

 

In a recent post I wrote about the effects other people have on our lives. How they can change us, make us grow. I did not realize when I wrote that post that the Lord was using me in someone’s life even as I felt the effects of others in my own life.

There is a girl that passes through my life once a week. I hardly know her and rarely see her but the Lord puts us in the same place every week. A couple months ago I hugged this girl, or she hugged me. I don’t remember who instigated it but I did notice that when she hugged me she clung like she never intended to let go. After that day when I see her I try to make a point of hugging her.

Those hugs are special for me but they were but moments in my life. It was something I did because I felt like she might need it. She has managed to work her way into a spot in my heart but even at that I could not see what was happening during those brief, but clingy, encounters.

Yesterday, through my daughter, the Lord has shown me what it all meant. While I was nowhere around this girl told my daughter “no one hugs me like she does.” When I heard that, my heart became hers. This girl that could so easily have passed through my life without me paying her any attention has now become one of those moments that changed me, but more important I marvel that I may have become one of those encounters that will affect her for life.

Dear reader, Scripture commands us to love others as ourselves. This is often a hard task and is so easy to forget to do as we go about our daily lives. But we never know when the simple act of showing someone we care can mean all the difference to them. May we be the voice and the touch of Christ so that others might feel His love through us.