“Love one another.” – John 13:34
“Don’t you want somebody to love?” begins the refrain from the hit song famously performed by Jefferson Airplane, provocatively challenging the listener, “Don’t you need somebody to love? Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?” Then comes the punch line in the form of profound advice in answer to the riddle, “You better find somebody to love,” it concludes.
As with most pop songs this one is no doubt referring to the search for romantic love, but that’s okay because love has to start somewhere, and romantic love is at least a starting point to experience loving and being loved, caring for someone as much as we care for ourselves, especially for someone who otherwise is not familiar with love Thankfully, many of us are fortunate enough to have experienced love long before that, from the time we were born having been loved by our mothers and fathers. The point is, if we desire love – and indeed, that is universal – we need to find somebody to love, whether a romantic partner, a parent or family member, friend, a stranger even, and most importantly God, then be open to the possibility of being loved back.
The amazing thing about love is that once we have experienced it the greater our capacity is to both give and receive it. I recall one of my sons coming to me expressing deep concern when he and his wife were expecting their second child whether he would have the capacity to love the second one as much as the first. All I could say was, “wait and see.” It has now been thirteen years since that conversation, and seeing my son today with his children is living proof that the human capacity to love – specifically my son’s own capacity to love – has solved the riddle.
According to devotional writer Sarah Young, “Most of mankind’s misery stems from feeling unloved.” Imagine, being able to eliminate most of the miseries of this world by loving someone else? And we each have the capacity to do just that, to literally change the world by simply loving one person at a time. The first step is to go out this week and find somebody to love. Jesus laid it on the line when He left us with this: “A new command I give you: Love one another.”