Devotional: We Have What We Need to Practice Love

Lord, You didn't hand us a manual on love and walk away. You knelt down with a towel and a basin and showed us exactly what it looks like.

In Mark 10, Your Son told those ambitious disciples — jockeying for thrones, angling for the seat of honor — that greatness in Your kingdom runs in the opposite direction. "Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all." And then He lived it, all the way to a cross.

I confess that I spend too many mornings waiting for better conditions to love well. I tell myself I'll be more generous when the budget eases up, more patient when life slows down, more present when I'm not so tired. But You have already given me everything I need. I have two hands that can carry a neighbor's groceries. I have a phone that can dial the friend who's been quietly falling apart. I have a kitchen table where someone lonely could sit tonight and be seen.

The old Baptist preachers used to say, "You can't love in theory — love has to put on work boots." So today, God, lace mine up. Show me the one person in my path who needs not a sermon but a sandwich, not advice but attention, not pity but genuine presence.