My oldest daughter got married recently. It was a lovely day filled with special moments and precious memories. An added sweetness was being able to celebrate with family and friends who are family, most of whom we haven’t seen in more than a year.
There were also a lot of people we had never met before. But that’s the thing about weddings – they turn strangers into relations. People who may have never even seen one another before are now tied together, not by their choice but by someone else’s choice. I guess it’s something like getting a sibling – your opinion on the matter doesn’t make much difference.
This got me thinking about blood relations and love relations. The family we inherit and the family we create. Some people come with love “built-in” and some get assigned to us without our consent. But maybe we’re wrong to believe the illusion that we get to choose the people we get to love. Because Jesus didn’t make any distinctions and He didn’t really give us any options – He just said, “I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you” (John 15:12).
Not a choice, a command. Not limited to the people you share DNA with, or the ones you like or the ones who are nice to you. As a matter of fact, Jesus taught that good intentions and actions were to be specifically extended to the people who are the most offensive to us, even to the point we would consider them enemies (Luke 6:35).
Because really and truly that is how He loved us. He welcomed sinners. He embraced the wasteful, the dirty, and the diseased. He didn’t turn His back on the socially awkward or the desperately needy. He begged forgiveness from the Cross for people while they were in the very act of murdering Him. He didn’t just do those things “back in the day”. He does them every day. He does them for you and for me. He makes rebels family. By His shed blood, we become His love relatives.
The Lord did not choose you and lavish his love on you because you were larger or greater than other nations (or because you deserved it - you were actually the least deserving!)... It was simply because the Lord loves you. Deuteronomy 7:7-8, parentheses added