We Can Love Better...

I was on my way home tonight driving down Alafay with Pandora Radio playing from my phone. As I was approaching campus "Do Better" by Say Anything came on. I got very excited because I will be seeing them with a handful of great friends on November 17th. However, the song became much more than a punk rock song while I was praying tonight, it became a worship song.
As I was struggling to get the song out of my head so I could focus on my prayers something happened and I just started sing new words to the song. The original lyrics at the end of the song are, "we can do better, we can do better, we can be the greatest band in the world;" they became, "we can love better, we can love better, we can serve the greatest God in the world," and variations of such that would emphasize praising God or serving more depending on what came out. I like it, particularly, because this week I've been trying to focus my life on serving and loving others more. I continue to ask myself, "how can I best love and serve so-and-so in this situation?" I think this pondering has come from worship Sunday at church when we sang, "They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. And they'll know we are Christian by our love." It's true, every word of it is true. People will know we are Christian by how we love others and each other. I know for myself I need to love better. I need be intentional with loving others, taking the time to figure out how to actually love people the best way possible, not how I would like to love them. Loving someone is not a feeling we get inside of ourselves when we think of a person. Loving someone is serving them, attending to their needs, putting them above ourselves. Most often it is easy to distinguish the difference between the I love yous. We know whether it' an I love you as in you're a good person I like being around or an I love you as in you're someone that means a great deal to me and my life or an I love you as in you're important, you matter, here is all of me. If we truly love others the way God calls us to love them, the way Jesus loved them, then our 'I love you' will express the latter of the three. No matter what a person's beliefs are or their lifestyle choice it is important to love them, to place them above ourselves and serve them. As Christians I believe that we can love better and thus serve the greatest God in the world. I sure know that I can.