a time to love

"I don't want to love others."
-This was a statement made by one of my most dearest friends in church one Sunday.

As much as it might hurt to hear it, I think it's often the truth for many of us. We don't want to love others (like God calls us to love Him and our neighbors). We make time for dates with our boy/girlfriends, spouses; we spend time facebooking/tweeting; we take time to hang out with family and friends etc. We do this because we want to, we want to love on our spouses and friends, we want to spend time with our family so we plan and make time to be with them and do stuff with them. But how many of us really make the time to go volunteer at the local soup kitchen; spend time visiting with shut-ins; take the time to honestly and truely love and serve both God and our neighbors in such ways?

I challenge you to make that extra effort to love your neighbor(s).

Here are a few ideas/suggestions how you can serve and love you neighbors while glorifying God all at the same time:

• When you ask someone "how are you," actually wait for their response
• Give a HUG
• Go through your closet and remove items you haven't warn in the past year (even those "just in case" items that you have yet to touch) and take them to your local clothes drive for homeless.
• Go to a local market, buy some water bottles and granola bars, tape a granola bar to each water bottle and store them in your car and everytime you see a homeless person (like near those on and off ramps holding signs for food, work and all that jazz) give them one of those waters and granolas
• Go to a near by nursing home or retirement home and visit with some of the residents (maybe even take them a snack like cookies or somthing to munch on while you all chat it up)

Those are just a few ideas, feel free to be creative
Make time to LOVE
In time, as the body of Christ, I think we'll learn to want to love others like we want to love our family and friends.
After all we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. The Lord made time for us, so lets spend that time loving and serving Him by loving and serving our neighbors.