Three Ways You Can Model Love Like Jesus

I met Max and Shirley during my freshman year of college. It was love from the beginning of our unusual friendship. Away from home for the first time, I connected with this seventy-plus-year-old married couple who served food and washed dishes in my college cafeteria. Maybe it was partly because that year, my own grandma was fighting leukemia and passed away in the spring. But it was deeper than that. It was the way they loved me.

Shirley’s small, wrinkled hand would grab mine as we stood off to the side of the bustling line of college kids filing in for lunch. She’d ask,, “How are you doing, my dear?” And when I sat by myself with open books and piles of notes stacked around me while I shoved a sandwich in my face, cramming for the exam I should I have studied for the night before, Max would detour to my table just to ask, “Can I grab you anything else to eat?”

But it was more than just the way this short, white-haired couple loved me. It was the way they showed love for each other. My favorite times were when the three of us would talk and laugh, when the clanging of plates and the noise of other conversations would fade as I watched them together. It was the way their eyes still softened when they looked at each other, the way Max would grin like a ten-year old when he teased Shirley, and the way Shirley could still laugh like a giddy school girl at Max’s corny jokes. These things spoke more to me than all our short conversations.

I didn’t know it then, but Max and Shirley were modeling the love of Christ. At eighteen years old, I never suspected that the man I was going to fall in love with and marry was sitting right next to me in that cafeteria. Now, every Christmas, I hang the red-and-green glass holly bell Max and Shirley gave me the spring of my senior year on our tree. There were tears in their eyes they wished me and my upcoming marriage well. The first Christmas we were married, I sent Max and Shirley a handwritten note in a Christmas card, and they sent one back. The year after that, I never heard back from them. I hoped their three kids found them a retirement home somewhere. In my mind, they were still laughing and smiling at each other’s jokes. I’ll never forget the example Max and Shirley gave me as they modeled loving others and loving each other well.

I want my own marriage to be filled with love and happy memories. I want to still laugh at my own husband’s corny jokes and grab his hand when we’re in our seventies. But on a deeper level, I want even more than just love and happiness in my marriage. I want to model for my children and the other people in my life what it means to love. Here are three simple ways we can model love for others:

1. Realize our nonverbal words matter. My favorite communications professor in college would always say, “Eighty percent of your communication is nonverbal; only twenty percent is the actual words that come out of your mouth.” I’ve found the way I make my spouse feel (whether loved and valued or disrespected and underappreciated) has absolutely everything to do with my nonverbals. If I say “Yes, dear,” but my tone is dripping in sarcasm and my eyes are rolling while I slam a cupboard door, I’m really not communicating love. I know it. He knows it. More importantly, the set of little eyes playing LEGOs on the floor beside me knows it too. There are days when I find my professor’s voice echoing in my head and God’s Spirit talking to my heart, I remember the way Max and Shirley looked at each other, and I take a deep breath and pray a little prayer before I say anything with my actions.
2. Don’t make too much of the little things. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8 NIV). I heard this in a sermon early in my marriage, and it has remained in my heart ever since. That word for “sins,” in Peter’s context can also mean “offenses.” So when he throws his dirty socks beside the hamper or leaves one too many pans to “soak” overnight, even though he’s already washed the dinner dishes, these aren’t sins against me but my own petty heart taking offense. I’m a sinner married to another sinner. And the days I remind myself that God’s grace covers us both are the days I love him freely and deeply. When I make the choice to love instead of taking offense, the grace that covers us both overflows into the atmosphere of our home and makes it happy, safe, and full of love for our kids. Suddenly, the dirty socks and soaking pans don’t seem so messy.
3. Remember love looks like Jesus. Love isn’t rooted in a feeling. But love isn’t rooted in commitment alone, either. Real love is rooted in Jesus because love originates from him. Jesus models for all of us what it means to really love. If I’m going to love like Jesus, I have to love Jesus first. Loving my husband and kids will just look like a failed effort on my part if I’m not learning how to love from Jesus. It’s so much easier to genuinely love our people when we let Jesus’ love for us and others suffuse our hearts and actions. Jesus’ love makes loving our hard-to-love people worth the effort.

I’m thankful God put Max and Shirley in my life during college. And I’m thankful for the love of Jesus and the grace he gives so that we can love our husbands and the people in our lives well.

Beth Sickel is a simple pastor’s wife who is married to her best friend and called mama by her four favorite little people. When she’s not drinking coffee or hiking with her family, she’s trying new dishes in the kitchen or blogging about creating space for Jesus conversations in your heart and home. You can find her over at RoomforWonderful.com.

Photograph © Tristan Le, used with permission