Above All Love Each Other Deeply

One of my favorite bible verses is 1 Peter 4:8, “Above all love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins.” I like to write that verse on all my wedding gifts. Most people opt for verses about love in Corinthians … not me! I’m going to enlighten all the newlyweds on the Peter love. In marriage, our ugliest self can come out so hopefully love covers that sin … yes you are full of love now, but one day you’ll be full of sinful rage over some trivial matter. So newlyweds is hang in there … love will cover your frustrations and sins.

I don’t watch the news because I don’t know how to explain the news to an inquisitive five-year-old. But the snippets that I see and the articles that I read leave me with a heavy heart, a frustrated heart, an angry heart. I grew up watching the news. I know it’s been an ugly world out there for a long time. Heck, I was the fifth-grader who wrote for their Student of the Year essay about what scared me most - someone slipping something into my drink. I had watched a 20/20 special on that … Obviously it impacted me. Needless to say, I wasn’t Student of the Year for Platt Elementary, and immediately recommended for therapy … just kidding … everyone thought that essay was totally normal.

Do people scare me … yes … I watched the news growing up. Of course people scare me! No matter their gender, skin tone, PEOPLE scare me. If you are a stranger and you get too close, I freak out. If you are someone I know and you get too close I still freak out. My family loves to make me jump out of my skin by sneaking up on me. Is there something deeply wrong with me … of course. I immediately think anyone coming close to me is going to attack me at any given moment. If I told you the number of times I have broken out into a full on sprint because I thought I was about to be attacked, you would laugh and simultaneously think I was one of the most awful people you have ever met. Once in the Dick’s Sporting Good parking lot because a clean-cut middle aged man was charging me … or I’ll reframe that statement to portray a more accurate situation … he was rushing to help me with my stroller as I struggled to load three toddlers into it to get a Father’s Day gift. But all I could see was a man charging me. Naturally I was scared. This is why I don’t not have a concealed carry licensee … I’d be on the news. Once in the middle of Downtown Hot Springs I thought someone was chasing me. I darted into an art gallery and told them the call 911 because someone was chasing me … they thought I was crazy … I was. Once in the middle of downtown San Francisco, I ran through the middle of a five lane street because the homeless shelters and soup kitchens were giving out lunches. I panicked at the number of homeless people on the streets. What did I think … they were going to eat me?! I have no idea. My point is … people scare me, not because of what they look like, just because I am leery of virtually anyone and everyone. I let my imagination get the best of me.

Yet, I know in my core and in my bones that God breathed life into EVERYONE, just like He breathed life into me. We are called to love. To love deeply … not just people we know or people like us or people who we agree with, but those who are vastly different, those who we have no common ground with, those who make your imagination run wild. We are called to love one another deeply because love covers a multitude of sins.