Optimist’s Roundtable

By Martha Sykes

There are lots of fake things in our world today, but some things in life we can’t fake. Love is one of them. It has unique characteristics, and it produces a fruit that cannot be mistaken. A fruit that keeps on growing, changing lives, families and our world.

Does this kind of love exist among us as Christians of today? Jesus wants us to love each other and to go to the ends of the earth for each other. Jesus wants our love for each other to stand out so much that unbelievers will notice.

Remember in the gospel of John that Jesus tells us He has loved us. That is a powerful statement because Jesus doesn’t love us because we’re perfect or lovable, but He loves all of us because He is love. God is love and if we love we are like Him. He doesn’t focus on our faults. He doesn’t wait for us to do something that would make Him love us. He showed His love to us by dying on the cross to sacrifice our sins. Jesus didn’t think about himself. He knew it would cost Him his life.

Jesus tells us to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves. As Christians, that has to be something we strive for, and it has to start in our homes and be spread around.

A little boy once walked all the way across town to attend Sunday school at a certain church. “ Why did you walk all the way here?” Someone asked him. “Why didn’t you just go to church right down the street from your house?” “Because here,” the boy said, “people love each other.”

That’s what we want and that’s the best way we can glorify the Savior for the amazing love that He has shown to us. We all want that to happen in our churches, in our community, and in our world.