Matthew 22:34-40
The Great Commandment
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

I wanted to title this entry God is Great, Beer is Good, and People are Crazy (thank you, Billy Currington), but since it will be about struggling with loving people I thought it would more appropriate to keep the title sarcastically positive...hey--at least it's a step in the right direction.

As a firefighter I have a unique job through which I am able to interact with all types of people and it is usually when they are in need of some form of help. I really enjoy this about the job and it gives me the opportunity to obey the greatest commandment from our Lord, to Love Him and to love others. Here comes the big BUT (thank you Pee Wee Herman "Everyone I know has a big but"): there are some times when a so-called emergency is from a person --well how do I put this nicely--that is a Cotton Headed Ninny Muggin (thank you Elf) nope--try again Matt....um, uninformed on what constitutes an emergency.

I mean everyone knows that you only call 9-1-1 when there is some life-threatening emergency, right??!! When you have chest pain or numbness or your house is on fire--pretty basic, right?? Well that is not always the case and sometimes we must respond at 2 a.m. to the life-threatening emergency of "my foot has been hurting for the past week." Then it dawns on me that it is really easy to love people that are like me or behave in the manner that I think they should behave, but that is not the kind of love God commands us to demonstrate.

The NLT version of this verse states in Verse 39 " A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

When I read it translated that way it really blows me away (thank you, Pastor Skip). I understand that as a Christian I have to love God; but often want to ignore the fact that it is equally important to love that crack head who just got high right before calling 9-1-1, demanding we send him to the hospital . That is tough...at least operating in the flesh (thank you Romans 8:5 5 For rthose who live according to the flesh set their minds on sthe things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on tthe things of the Spirit. )

So it is pretty basic I know, but a great Bible teacher I know once said "We need to master the basics" and the rest takes care of itself. I pray for all of you reading this that you would go out today and love God, love others, and do this operating in His Spirit. He could remove anything from your life in a millisecond if He so desired. So those difficult people, or shall we say lovely people, are there in our lives for some sort of purpose. We need to change the way we look at them and see them as the Lord does.

Matthew Hayward