John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Sometimes called the greatest commandment of all is the commandment that we love one another. How simple it sounds, yet how hard it is to actually do sometimes. There’s always some little thing that makes it so we don’t like someone or we disapprove of what they are doing or some other silly thing that holds us back from truly loving the people around us. We may not always approve of what someone is doing, how they are acting or how they live their lives, but we can still love them anyways. This goes hand in hand with the previous scripture of not judging people. When we have love for others, we find it difficult to judge and disparage them.
Showing love to others was something the Savior excelled at. He was always comforting someone, doing thing for others, blessing people and He always had good thoughts for people. It didn’t matter what the people did, what they had done, what they believed, what lifestyle they lived or how they felt about Him. Jesus Christ loved everyone. Even when hanging from the cross, He showed how much love He had for even those who had put Him there by asking the Father to forgive them. If the Lord can forgive those who are in the process of taking His life, how can we not love those around us who do so much less to us?
Some of the ways we can show love to people are pretty basic. We don’t need to go out and throw love letters at people or engage in huge dramatic displays. We can follow the Savior’s example by helping those around us, speaking kindly to and about the people we come in contact with, performing acts of service for those in need, praying for people, forgiving those who have offended or upset us, forgiving those who are willfully mean to us, sharing what we have and even just smiling at people as we walk down the street. It is amazing what those little acts of kindness can do for people.
Sometimes we may think it can be hard to love the way the Savior did, but if we look to His example, we can see that it’s simple. Lately, it has become ‘fashionable’ to react with anger and violence towards things we don’t agree with, be it other people’s lifestyles, other people’s beliefs or political/judicial decisions. When we find ourselves feeling anger and a desire to act out at these things, we need to remember how the Savior would act were He here. He would stand up for what He believes in, but He would do it with kindness, love and a desire of goodwill for others. If we find it hard to feel love for someone else, we can still show our love for the Savior by behaving in a way He would want us to behave: with kindness and respect.
Love is not a difficult thing to show because there are so many little ways we can show it. We do not need to have romantic or even familial love towards other people to behave in a loving manner towards them. We just need to love the Savior, be kind towards the people around us, have a desire to uplift people we come in contact with and have a desire to love our fellow man and we will then be possessed with a Christlike love for everyone. Sometimes it can be hard to develop this love towards people who are unkind to us, but I promise that if you make it a goal and a priority to learn to be loving towards the people around you, your life will be blessed and you will have more peace and happiness in your heart.
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