Do You Love Me?

     I spend a lot of my time teaching children.  They take a lot of patience, to say the least.  Lately, my patience has not been at its usual higher level.  I have been blaming it on being near the end of my pregnancy. 

     Today, one question keeps resounding in my heart.  One thought keeps resounding in my head.  One truth keeps repeating in my soul.  Love.  Do I love you?  Do I believe that God loves you?  Do I really love others like God loves them?

     I see the little faces and wiggly bodies pile into my room hour after hour.  I know them all by name and I know which ones will test me and which ones will please me.  I sometimes forget to really see them.  For they were each one created by a Loving God.  Each one is made in His image.  Each one is loved uniquely. 
     It is not just the children.  It is the faces of my coworkers, members of my family, and the lady at the coffee shop.  Everybody is silently asking me this question today, "Do you love, even me?"  

     I John 4:20 --The Message
  If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.


~B Charmer