“Love is a choice...”
In our everyday moments of life we are under a constant barrage of choices. They never seem to stop.
Do I get up early or sleep a little longer?
Should I wear this or that?
What do I want to eat for breakfast?
How do I respond to this person?
Do I like this one or that one?
Do I go left or right at the light?
This is just a few of the thousands of questions that we are asked by others or that we ask ourselves on a daily basis. We constantly are choosing things and by saying "yes" to one thing we are inevitably saying "no" to another.
Some of our choices are easy, come quickly, and don't cost us a lot if we get it wrong.
Some of our other choices are very difficult, take a long time to process, and have the potential to cost us extreme amounts of time, pain, or finances.
When we choose Jesus we make a conscience decision to follow him and we must take into account all that goes with that decision.
When we choose Jesus, we choose community. You cannot follow Jesus outside of community.
When we enter into this messy thing called community many times, over and over again, love sounds like a choice.
We will face moments and interactions within our community that test our character and in those moments loving those people will sound like a choice. It will sound like a voice inside of our heads reminding us that at one point in our lives we chose to live in relationship with this person or people.
When we say I choose you, what we are saying is that no matter what you do, or what happens I will not allow myself to not love you or leave you.
When we choose Jesus we choose community and the way we love one another matters.
“This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples - when they see the love you have for each other.”