Years ago, at a Wednesday night Bible study, one of our members told us about her youth group growing up. Her pastor talked often about love. As teenagers, of course, they all assumed he meant romantic love. But he clarified — not romantic love, but agape love, the kind that sacrifices for another person.

Hearing that, the students said, "Well, we all love each other. We do things for each other all the time."

Their pastor replied, "That's easy. You're all lovable. The real challenge of the gospel is to love the unlovable."

To love the unlovable. That's not easy, is it?

A Lutheran minister named Roy Lloyd once interviewed Mother Teresa and asked her, "What's the biggest problem in the world today?" She answered without hesitation: "The biggest problem in the world today is that we draw the circle of our family too small. We need to draw it larger every day."

I think about that often. We are usually quite good at loving the people who are easy to love — the ones who are kind to us, who share our values, who make us feel good about ourselves. That kind of love doesn't ask much of us.

But Jesus was never particularly interested in the easy kind. He said, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them." (Luke 6:32) The gospel asks something harder of us — to widen the circle. To extend grace toward the people who are difficult, who have wronged us, who don't seem to deserve it by any ordinary measure.

That is precisely where grace tends to matter most.

What would it look like for you to love someone unlovable today? What would it mean to draw your circle just a little larger?

Prayer: Loving God, we remember that love is patient and kind, that it is not envious or arrogant or rude, and that love never ends. Thank you for loving us this way — especially in the moments we were hardest to love. Give us the grace to extend that same love to others, and may we find your peace as we do. Amen.

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