I think God wants us to get a little bit more uncomfortable in our interactions with others. Not to reserve our best behavior for those we feel deserve it but to love unreservedly. I'm not talking about the special love reserved for your spouse or even filial love. I'm talking about agape love—the love God bears for his children.
Take Paul's words to the Roman Church: 'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.' (Romans chapter 5, verse 8).
You and I will never understand the true extent of this kind of love. We will never understand it because in our humanity it is impossible to love to the extent Jesus loved and loves humanity.
Be a blessing
We're standing in a crowded wine bar called St Germaine in Granada, and my wife is elbowed in the back—not hard, not deliberately. She edges forward a bit though there isn´t a lot of room in the tiny bar and both our chests are already only centimetres from the cheese platter we graze on between sips of a full-bodied red—for which the place is reputed.
Moments later, the wine in my glass steeps drastically and the cheese platter slides into the brick wall hard as my wife juts forward, elbowed again by the woman behind her. Priscila looks at me, her big brown eyes saying ´do something, please´, but then she says, 'no don´t. It´s okay.'
As Priscila sips her wine she musters the courage to turn around and talk to her nudger. I think both Priscila and I (certainly I) had considered it was a perfectly reasonable request and that it would attract a fair response.
For some reason we were mistaken, sorely as it turned out, because Priscila received another twenty nudges over the remaining half hour we were there simply for asking the question.
I suddenly saw within the situation the chance that it could develop into something more than one woman asking another if she wouldn´t mind stepping back 'just a little.'
'I paid their bill,' I said to Priscila as we left the bar. Priscila thought about it for a second and then linked arms with me in approval.
'That´s nice' she said, 'I´m glad you did.'
In a moment the next day I considered the interaction. Rather than stewing over situations out of my control, over people who were unpleasant, rather than thinking about how I might get even, I might instead go over the top in actually blessing them. In this case I thought paying the bill was a nice way of saying, 'hey, forget about what happened. Enjoy your evening!'
Then God nudged my heart as I was walking towards a certain man in the pueblo in which we've been living the past few months or so—a man who, every time he sees us and says 'hello' clearly addresses only my wife and not me—in a way we in Australia we would absolutely consider over-friendly.
'Go and talk to him about me.'
'No way! You're asking too much God' I said.
I had my response to this creep down. I just stared at him with my green eyes, clenched my jaw and let him know an over-friendly greeting without reply was as far as he was ever going to get.
'That´s not agape love, is it?'
We´re not sinners for feeling it´s difficult to love some people.
The trigger might be different for you but we all have our weak points when it comes to showing love, grace, compassion.
I'm thankful God threw away the list before he met me.
'This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that."
Matthew chapter 5, verse 47, The Message (emphasis mine)
The challenge comes in loving those who we do not want to love.
Learning to love like Christ
God nudged me about this guy more than a month ago. Every day since then I have seen him. He has hollered at my wife and winked at her and greeted her—and said nothing to me. Every single time he has done this I have had the opportunity to enact love, to simply talk to him.
I then remembered the reason Jonah ended up in the belly of a whale was because he simply didn´t like the Ninevites—he thought they were beneath him and certainly not worthy of God´s love.
'Am I like Jonah?' I wondered.
'I don´t speak Spanish God! I can´t talk to him about you.' I reasoned.
Then I thought about Moses.
God doesn´t need me to be eloquent, even to be competent in a language. If I can talk to the guy who makes me coffee, then I can talk to the guy who hollers at my wife. It´s a case of pride.
Is this a challenge for all of us? Maybe deep down we have unconsciously disqualified some people from the love of Christ because they do not, at least to us, meet the list of criteria for a person worthy of love?
Remember—Christ died for us 'whilst we were still sinners'
I understand it.
I appreciate it.
I still haven´t been able to act on it.
Even as I look at my life now, praising God for the wonders he has done in my life, I'm still so far off the mark in simply loving people.
It is reason enough to pursue God more.
David Luschwitz is an Australian teacher currently working in the South of Spain. David is currently working on his book, 'I Have This Hope', available later in the year.
To read more of David's writing and to hear his story head to www.davidluschwitz.com
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David's previous articles can be found at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/david-luschwitz.html