Do You Truly Love Me?

At the end of the book of John, Jesus asks Peter three times “do you truly love me?” (John 21:15-18). Peter three times pledges his love to Jesus in response. This receives the surprising response to “feed my sheep” and “take care of my sheep.” I imagine there is a reason why Christ had to ask Peter this three times. Peter had just denied Christ three times before he was crucified, so I am sure that had something to do with it. But I also think that it has more to do with all of us who followed after Peter. I wonder at times how many times Jesus has had to ask me “do you truly love me?” for me to finally get it.

The challenge for us is to take notice of those who are in need, whatever the need is. We need to incorporate into our lives those who are the destitute among us, no matter where they live. We are not to ignore, deny, brush off, discount, avoid, or evade those who are in need. We are told by Jesus three times that if we truly love him we are to take care and feed each other.

I heard somewhere recently that if each of us who have the financial means would just adopt one person we could end world hunger. Now, I am not sure if that really is true—but what if it is? What if all we needed to do was to help one other person on this planet? If you are like me, I feel like I need to help whole villages of people and so the enormity of the task seems to overwhelming and I end up helping no one. But if we took the mentality of just helping one person in need, I do believe we could turn this world around.

My prayer for 2007 is that we will choose each moment to live radical lives of love towards each other. I pray we say how much we love each other and how grateful we are for each other’s presence in our lives. I pray when we see needs that we realize it is a call to action to be a blessing to someone else. I pray we dare to live compassionate lives where the hurts of others are our hurts. I pray we can answer Jesus question to all of us “do you truly love me?” with a resounding “yes!”