Sunday Devotions - Love each other

My command is this; Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. John 15:12-13

My sister and her husband are both police officers in a large Midwestern city. Recently one of their fellow officers was shot and killed while conducting a routine traffic stop. It was a stark reminder for their town that police work is not easy physically or emotionally nor is it always a safe profession. Police officers volunteer for this job, no one tells them they have to put themselves in harms way in order to protect innocent people they've never met.

I like to keep an illusion in my head day to day that my sister and brother in law are always safe when they go to work, but I know that isn't always the case. But if I had to choose the police officers who protect me day in and day out, I would choose them first. The majority of officers would lay down their lives to save others. What an awesome kind of love, the greatest love.  

Jesus did the same thing of course. Jesus was mortal and had the free will to choose to go to the Cross or he could have refused the will of God. But Jesus did choose to die to save people he never met, who weren't yet born, for us.

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank You for Jesus' love that he died to save us. Thank You for the police officers and soldiers and others in our community and country who put themselves in harms way everyday to keep us, strangers and friends, safe. Amen.