A Devotion for Everybody, Always

Early this week, I traveled down to Monroe County in the Keys to visit the region for the first time and to lead 2 of the first home dedications for the area. Though the flight was short, I had some much-needed time to sit and read. My pick this week was Bob Goff’s book Everybody, Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People.

Bob opens the book with the question: What happens when we give away love like we're made of it?

He spends the rest of the book highlighting his experiences in trying to live this out: loving people when they don’t deserve it, embodying love when it seems impossible, risky, and downright terrifying.

Again and again, he returns to the Gospels and the way that Jesus models this for us; how in Jesus, embodied love came near to the broken, the difficult, the religious, and the righteous, all the same.

Goff writes:

“Jesus talked to His friends a lot about how we should identify ourselves. He said it wouldn’t be what we said we believed or all the good we hoped to do someday. Nope, He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there is more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; love is someone we become.”

Storms like Irma and Maria have one thing in common with Jesus: they didn’t discriminate.

Anyone and anything that came across their path was fair game. Now, with the storms, that meant destruction and devastation. With Jesus, that meant extravagant acceptance and care. He didn’t care where you were from, what you had done, or how much status or worth society claimed you had. He didn’t just love people, he became love so that people would know God.

If we are defined not by the work that we do, but the love that we give to others, how are we doing?

I know it is easier to keep our distance from the neighbor that we’d rather not love, the client that makes it hard to serve, the family member that frustrates us, or the coworker that we disagree with.

But, like Goff reminds, we have been given everybody (the weird, the hard to love, the poor, the addicted, the ill, the mean, the spiteful, and the kind), always (when we feel like it, when we don’t, when we’re ready, when we’re unprepared, when we’re glad, and when we’re angry) to love. We’ve been given everybody, always.

What Jesus promises us is that we are never alone in this work. We can give love away like we’re made of it, because we are. You, me, and all the people we serve. We’re made of love, for love.

Keep givin’ it away.

In Christ,

Chaplain Amy