Love Actually

​A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.​ Deep down we know that we all need to be loved. Sometimes life has made it difficult for us to receive that love or to give it, but that's the key ingredient that makes life worth living. Nobody wants a loveless marriage. No child wants a loveless home. No elderly patient want to live in a loveless nursing home. Little acts of kindness and compassion can make the most challenging seasons of life more bearable.  Jesus made love the hallmark of his followers: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) That love will spill out at work in the way we treat our colleagues, especially those who may be above or below us in the pecking order of the organisation. It will leak out in everyday contacts at the checkout or with the neighbour who tries our patience. It will colour our approach to leadership if we follow the model that Jesus gave of washing feet rather than bossing others around.  As we move closer to Holy Week and Easter, we are drawn into the mystery of love marked by steely courage as well as tender compassion, reaching out from a cross to forgive enemies and to arrange for the care of an elderly mother. And that is still the shallow edges of the ocean depths of a God who so loved the world that he gave…... Love is cross-shaped, actually.