This week I was asked what it meant to live a life like Jesus and with a bit of thought I said “love God and love others”. It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the question but I was pretty impressed with myself for coming up with an answer that sounded decent enough. It really got me thinking about what that looked like in the day to day.
I have the great joy of spending a couple of hours a week studying the Bible and discussing life with youth in both our school and in my local church. It’s pretty inspiring to see young people excited to get to know God more, wrestle through questions and ideas that trouble them and bounce life’s challenges around together. They are unashamed about their desire for knowledge and wisdom and that is pretty infectious. Our lunch time Bible Study at PCS had a wonderful discussion just last week around our readings in the book of Acts where they were able to share how they have felt God working in their lives. It was so encouraging to sit back and hear students let others have a glimpse into their relationship with God. They genuinely have a love for Him and that is having a huge impact on our school and community.
This past couple of weeks alone I have seen numerous people live this concept out in their lives through our small missions team heading off to Moree and coming back impacted and changed with a desire to share more of their faith and skills and basically just love people. They are still talking about the connections they made with the students and people they interacted with and are eager to bring that same love for people into their everyday lives. They have definitely passed on the bug to the other students in our Bible Study so watch this space for more.
Loving people doesn’t just happen in the big planned out moments but also in small everyday moments. I’ve seen Year 8 girls wanting to get together just to pray for others in our community. Staff jumping in to help out by covering classes, running events and sharing a laugh because they have a love of what they do and the people they work with. The SRC who want year groups to bond together so are providing lunch once a week to a year level so they can hang out and enjoy time together. But the one that really made me smile this week is our current Multimedia students, who by the time this is published will have submitted their major work and are most likely napping after a bunch of late nights, who have shown love through their actions because when they finished their work they jumped straight into helping out their peers or offering a word of encouragement and support to those who hadn’t. These are just to name a few of the ways our community love each day.
Maybe to live like Jesus is summed up in loving God and loving people because in these small moments I think we can really see the heart of people loving the world like Jesus did. Have a great weekend everyone!
Hollie