There is a story about a man who was trying to read a book; it was a serious book and it required a good deal of concentration to absorb the information. This man had a little boy who kept interrupting him. The little boy would grab his dad’s legs and say, “I love you daddy.”
The dad would pat the boy’s head and say, “That’s nice son.”
Then the little boy would do it again and the dad would say, “Yes, son, I love you too.” The boy was not satisfied with his dad’s response, so he ran up and jumped on him and squeezed him as hard as he could and said, “Daddy, I love you, and I’ve just got to do something about it.”
In Luke 10:27 Jesus says, we have to love God with everything – heart, soul, strength and mind. We must love our neighbor as ourselves.
Pastor John Piper explains this command about loving others like this, “Jesus demands we in essence tear the skin off our body and wrap it around another person; and the longings we have for our own safety and health and success and happiness we now feel for that other person as though they were us.”
Most of us know the story Jesus told in Luke 10:25-37 about the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan saw a man hurting on the side of the road and he had compassion on this man. He loved this man.
They say, “Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen and some say what just happened.” The Good Samaritan made things happen. Love does something about it.
From this story, we learn that love is proactive, in other words, it takes responsibility; love pays the cost; love takes a commitment; love requires we make sacrifices; love is not always convenient; love is merciful, and love is in short supply.
Love is also a healing agent. What I mean by that is we see love expressed physically in the parable as the Samaritan reached out and applied medication and wrapped the wounds of the man that was left for dead on the side of the road. Science tells us we need four hugs a day just to survive and 12 in order to grow our core health. Again, love is a healing agent. Sometimes people just need a hug. By God’s design love when expressed in this way has healing power.
At the end of this passage Jesus tells us to “go and do” like the Good Samaritan. Let me encourage you and paraphrase what Jesus said – “Go get’em. Be someone that makes things happen.” He told me to tell you that.
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