Loving Others Out of Constant Fullness
Loving others is really easy on a good day. It’s easy when you’re already having a good day. It’s really easy with those who love you back, whether that be your family or your close friends. It’s not easy though when you feel drained emotionally, when you are physically or mentally tired, or need to love someone who is unkind.
Humans are constantly trying to put love out into the world and love everyone around us. As Christians, we are even commanded to love. It’s the second greatest commandment after loving God. That’s a big deal and that command shouldn’t be taken lightly. If I’m being honest, that’s one of the many reasons I choose God, because he chooses love above all else. If you are ever struck with something that opposes love, that is not God.
Okay, so how is it that we are told to love others, but it’s so difficult to actually follow through with sometimes?
Our Love Cup
I heard this explained recently to me in the most beautiful way by a girl named Megan Marshman. Imagine you’re holding a cup full of love in your hands. You go out into the world pouring all of that love onto others. At the end of the day, you don’t even need to look in the cup, because you know it’s empty. You are drained from loving others all day and you’ve been holding your cup outwards waiting for others to fill yours. In reality they are also holding their cup towards you waiting for you to fill theirs as well. We end up with everyone pointing their empty cups towards each other waiting for to feel loved and fulfilled.
What if I told you that you could operate on a consistently full cup? What if I told you that we’ve been operating the wrong way for so long? We weren't created to function this way and this is why we are always feeling empty and looking to the wrong places, like social media, to feel loved and fulfilled. As you know though, we never feel like it’s enough. No matter how many likes, followers, friends, money, things we own, it’s never enough. We never feel satisfied from any of it. It’s almost like we were created to feel fully loved a different way.
Being Loved
If we were meant to feel fully loved another way, where do we begin? Facing our cups another direction, up. Instead of trying to gain love and acceptance from an unpredictable world, face your eyes upwards. Turning towards God is the source for our acceptance and love. This world isn’t meant to fulfill, but God is.
If you don’t already know, you are fully known and loved by the God who created you. You were created with such thought and effort. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” -Psalms 139:13. That is truly one of the coolest thing to think about. While we were still in our mother’s womb, we were being meticulously and purposely created.
You are not only seen by Him but adored, which is something we will never fully feel elsewhere. When we are ready, he is there to fill us, and keep us filled with love and adoration. We don’t need to seek love and fulfillment from the world, we need only to remember how loved we already are. Not only does he fill our cups when we are kind and loving, but he will also fill us when we are unkind and unloving.
Loving Others
Once we recognize that we are already seen, loved, and fulfilled it is easy to begin to love others. Instead of pointing our empty cups towards others we point them upwards to be filled.
Imagine holding your cup upwards. It’s not just full like we desire, but it’s overflowing. If you pour your cup outwards towards others to love people, yours is still being filled and it is consistently overflowing.
When we feel at peace with who we are, who were were created to be, knowing we are loved no matter what we have or what we do, we are able to care for others in the most beautiful way. Then when we are met with a day that isn’t going our way or a person is unkind, it’s still easy to love them, because we aren’t trying to receive anything from them but merely give. That is the most beautiful place to be.
Go into the world ready to love others knowing you are fully seen and fully loved.