What does love look like?

Love always looks like something. Love is conceptually simple but incredibly difficult to carry out. It is mostly subtle and therefore can easily be missed. But the opportunities are plentiful. Love looks like obedience. Love looks like smiling at strangers as they walk busily by and catching them off guard with a “hello!” or a “good morning!” Love looks like stopping for the one person to offer them a hand with their groceries. Love looks like giving up your seat for someone on the bus, even though they aren’t a senior citizen or disabled. Love looks like sacrificing precious and necessary sleep to show up for the 8am tabling shift, even though it’s below freezing outside and you might be the only one there. Love looks like offering your apartment as a place to store church stuff and willing to be woken up at 7:50 in the morning, and then coordinating being home at 3 so that you can open the door for them. Love looks like responding to a last minute facebook post at 7:30 am to help carry heavy stuff down three flights of stairs. Love looks like binding hundreds of pages of discipleship manuals late at night after a small group potluck and a long first day at school so that others can get theirs that much sooner. Love looks like buying a cup of coffee for the guy on the corner and hearing his story out, even though it might be completely made up. Love looks like spending time to write out a thoughtful letter to your Compassion child to go with that monthly donation. Love looks like getting on your knees and praying for your family, even though it seems like nothing is really changing. Love looks like picking your roommate up when she calls you for a ride, even though you were just about to hop in the shower. Love looks like taking the time to ask how your roommate is doing, even when everything seems normal. Love looks like attacking the sink full of dishes that aren’t yours. Love looks like picking up a piece of trash you see on the floor at church, because it’s your house too. Love looks like staying 2 extra hours after a weekend retreat of fasting to clean the bathrooms and floors. Love looks like asking the telemarketer how she’s doing even though she just woke you up. Love looks like tipping the barista even though he was rude. Love always looks like something. Love always looks like Someone. 

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. - 1 Cor 13:1-3