We are aware of the high cost of living. We are not so nearly aware of the high cost of loving. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son...” This is the story of the incarnation – from the manger birth to the cross on Calvary’s hill. This is the ultimate example of love, and it is the pattern and model of the kind of love that we are encouraged to show in response to God’s love for us.

There are not any of us who can fathom the price of true love as it is demonstrated by Jesus’ crucifixion and all that it means to us in respect to our relationship to God. “But we see Jesus,” said the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, “who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). And we see in Jesus the kind of love we are to extend to the human family about us. “This is My commandment,” said Jesus, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

It is going to cost something to love – the addicted and the perverted, the selfish and the corrupted, those of classes and races other than our own, even our neighbors down the block or some of the people we worship with in our own churches. Our great God who gave us God’s love will now extend that love to others – through us.

Despite our enthusiastic affirmation and proclamations of God’s love for humankind, there are people we do not like very much. We pray God’s forgiveness and ask God to teach us anew the meaning of Jesus’ great love and thereby enable us to love and accept others even as God loves and accepts us.