And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:30-31
Your zip code is not an accident. You live there. You work there. You play there. But God placed you there. He worked in ways that you could never comprehend or calculate to divinely position you right where you are at this very moment and this very season. Life didn’t just take you there. He did. If God thought it important enough to ordain in which community you and I would live, work and play, we should think it important enough to find out why. And then, by His grace, get busy doing what He placed us here to do. While there are undoubtedly very specific things God means for us to do, one over-arching purpose for our divine deployment is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31) Every person in your life is there for this reason: for you to love on them. Have you ever thought about that? God put you where you are, and brought people into your life where you are, so you could demonstrate His love for them, to them. These aren’t just neighbors, co-workers, and team-mates; they are intended recipients of God’s affection to be administered through you. God providentially orchestrated the events that got you and other people to meet so you could love on them, and point them to the greatest love of them all … His love for us. Every meeting, every conversation, every interaction, every passing, and every encounter is a wonderful occasion to bless and brighten someone else’s life to the glory of God. Those intersections where your life meets someone else’s life hold a beautiful, God-given opportunity and responsibility to love like Jesus.
