I love my bed. I love having two cups of coffee with cream and sugar in the morning. I love the smell of Lowe’s hardware store. I love the change of seasons. I love my Asics. I love beautiful old houses in the city. I love listening to the Lumineers, Coldplay, the Wailin’ Jennies, and Jon Foreman. I love dessert. I love my family. I love my friends. I love being loved…and even just liked. There are a lot of things that I love. But do I love people who I don’t like? Do I love the people who just plain annoy me? What about the ones who hurt me or let me down? Do I love them? Do I love them more than I love myself?
This week I was put into a situation in which these questions became a painful reality. I realized how un-loving I can easily become. I put up my walls to protect myself from attack, and try to keep certain people at an arm’s length: the student who never showers and hardly ever changes clothes, but who needs one-on-one help with school work; the student who hardly ever shows up to school in a good frame of mind; the drama queens who are crying out for attention in all the wrong ways; the co-worker who doesn’t trust me and seems to be out to get me…what does loving these people look like? Do I really aspire to the words of St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer:
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
The truth is this: most of the time, I want the opposite. I want to be consoled before I console. I want to be understood before I understand. I want to be loved before I love. But that’s neither what Jesus calls me to nor what he demonstrates in his life and death.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you?
Even sinners do that.” (Luke 6:32-33)
I am a person who often loves poorly. Chances are good that you also fall into this category. So, what does it look like to practice love among people who love poorly? I think Henri Nouwen says it best:
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”
Lord, help me to love and forgive others and you have loved and forgiven me.
experilent 
“I realized how un-loving I can easily become. I put up my walls to protect myself from attack, and try to keep certain people at an arm’s length . . . ” All I can say is: YES. I’m praying for my heart to be softened to the ways I do this in my own life. Thank you for this eye-opening reminder.