learning to love

Today in the One Year Bible, Paul teaches us that love is the most important thing. He says this in the passage from Galatians 5:13-26. He says that the whole law can be summed up in the one command: love your neighbor as yourself. And then he adds that the people of Galatia needed to be careful because they had a tendency to bite and devour one another.

You've experienced both, haven't you? Love and devouring? The two extremes. There are people who help bring love out of you. And there are people who poke you and push your buttons until you want to devour them.

Sometimes learning to love people the way God wants us to love means spending more time with those who teach us to love, and taking a vacation from those who make us want to devour. Not avoid them forever... they need our love, too. Some people are toxic enough that we can only give them our love from a distance. But in learning to love like God wants us to, it often means spending time with people who love, and spending time away from those who devour.

The people in your life will help you become who you want to be - if they're the kind of people you want to be.

God, thanks for teaching us to love... and to walk away from those who devour.