Love When You Are Busy

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. Amy Carmichael

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.  Augustine

Have you noticed how hard it is to love others when you are busy?  When we get so busy with our lives that we don’t have time to love others, we are too busy.  How do I know this?  I know this because I have walked in those shoes.

How many times do you get so busy at work that you don’t have the time to see someone else’s hurt?  If you think about it, every single person on this earth is hurt or has been hurt in their lifetime.  It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, every single human being has been hurt and in the midst of our busy lives is when they need someone to love them. God didn’t create us to be all about us.  

Yesterday I was busy.  Things that I didn’t have on my “to do” list when I got to work showed up in my inbox.  Our field supervisors couldn’t pull permits because the city didn’t have our current insurance certificate.  I had a check that had to be cut and sent by overnight mail.  A contract had to be written and emailed.  These are just a few of the things that weren’t on my original “to do” list. 

Then I had a coworker call to tell me she was going to help her mother make funeral arrangements for her sister.  Her sister is 35 years old and dying.  She was given two months to live and yesterday they told her she probably wouldn’t make it two weeks.  When she got to the office she came in so I closed the door and she just cried.  She is trying to figure out how to help her mother get through this.  What did I do?  I know I have a job to do every day. I sat with her and we talked.  Too many times I think we have become so uncomfortable with death that we ignore it.  We bypass the people who are the most in need of our love.  We’re busy so we don’t have time.  How did I fix this so that I could honor my employer but also love the person?  I stayed late to make up the time.

What I have learned over the years is that when I give love sacrificially, I benefit.  When you love sacrificially, it means in the midst of giving that kind of love it is costing you something.  In this instance I knew my cleaners closed at 6:00pm, I work 37 miles away and I am leaving work during rush hour traffic.  I left work at 5:05pm and made it to the cleaners 5 minutes before they closed.   

When we love sacrificially and give up something we want or need, to do something for someone else, it comes back to us ten-fold.  We reap what we sow. The other thing I learned is that the person I am giving love to doesn’t need to know about the sacrifice.  They don’t need to know what it cost me.  When we put ourselves last, that is when God reveals Himself the most.

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, thank You for showing me instances where I can love sacrificially.  Please keep me from getting impatient because if I do, I will miss out on the blessing.  You teach us about sacrificial love through the life of Jesus. He gives us the best example to follow.  

     

Scripture: The Greatest Gift

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3