I wonder if Jesus actually “liked” all of His disciples? Surely at least one of them got on His holy nerves, had a mole on his face that totally turned Jesus off or a nasal voice that made our Lord cringe – I mean, He was fully God but still fully man, and He was tempted in every way just like we are, right?
Maybe I'm just trying to justify the fact that I'm not always a nice person. I must confess to you that I don't like everybody. But I'm commanded to love them. Even if I think they're icky. Because He loves them. And He loves me, too, and I know I'm icky to Him sometimes! I'm even icky to myself sometimes!
A few years ago, a distant relative of mine became very ill. Charlie (real person, fake name) was in his 70's, old for his age, and I didn't enjoy his company at all. In my eyes, he was boring, rude, and self-centered. When he wasn't proudly displaying his 14 bottles of pills for the third time in one day, he was making hideously racist remarks that caused me to walk out on him more than once, among other things that rendered him an unpleasant person to be around.
But Charlie needed help. He lived alone and had no friends (unsurprisingly) and was no longer able to drive. So I checked on him a couple of times a week, took him to a doctor appointment now and then, picked up stuff from the grocery store for him occasionally, things like that. Nothing very impressive.
When Charlie passed away after about a year of that, his daughter came up to me at his funeral and gave me a very sweet hug. She said, through grateful tears, “Thank you for loving Daddy.”
"Loving?" I was flummoxed. What I saw as just going through the motions, doing a few things for a helpless old man, his daughter perceived as “love.” My actions apparently showed love even when I felt nothing of the sort.
Is that why Jesus said in 1 John 3:18, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”?
Maybe God doesn't expect us to “like” everybody, to go out to lunch with them, to laugh at their stupid jokes or to think their kids are adorable or whatever it is we do with our friends. Maybe He just expects us to demonstrate His love by meeting the needs of others regardless of how we feel toward them.
Feelings are fickle, after all, but God's love never fails. By pushing aside our own feelings of annoyance or disgust or boredom in order to help someone else, we allow God to love that person through us. And maybe our own feelings of love will grow in the process!
