4/17/2024

“No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13. Everyone at one point or another has asked themselves the question, what is love and what does love look like? Memorial Day is a reminder of what true love is. When you consider what love is you may think of the feeling of butterflies in your stomach or you may think of a profound sense of joy, but is that what love truly is?

When a soldier stands on the battlefield willing to die, sacrificing his life, he doesn’t have butterflies in his stomach, he’s not filled with joy as bullets and explosions surround him, and yet he does it anyway. Love is a decision, it’s a commitment. I don’t love because I feel like it, I love because I have decided to love.

As we read John 15:13 we are reminded that true love is making a commitment to someone or something that you’re willing to sacrifice for. Just as Christ loves us and chose to sacrifice his life for our sake, so to have many soldiers sacrificed their lives for the nation they hold so dear. A nation that they love.

As we look forward to Memorial Day we need to ask ourselves; what does love look like in my life? Have I made the decision to commit myself to the things I love? Am I committed to my children and to make any sacrifice for them? How about my spouse, even when times get hard am I still committed to them and willing to sacrifice for them? What about Christ, can you truly say that you would sacrifice everything even your own life, for the sake of loving him.

Love requires commitment and sacrifice; it requires us to hold to our commitment even when times are hard. God looked at all the sin of humanity throughout all of time. Has seen every evil we have ever done and ever will do. Yet still made the decision to sacrifice his son on the cross, so that we might be saved. That is true love, that is the love we are called to show others. And we should never forget the love that our soldiers have shown as they sacrifice themselves on the battlefield.

Associate Pastor Clay