One day it came to me that sometimes we treat our fellow humans like corn on the cob. Whenever I see people at the corn on the cob bin in a grocery store, I usually see them carefully peeling down the husks, peering inquisitively inside, and diligently deciding whether the corn is good enough for them. Whether or not it is in perfect condition – or not. Then they toss what they determine to be imperfect back into the bin. And proceed to search for the perfect corn.
God’s greatest commands are to love Him with all our hearts and to love one another. But if we’re honest with ourselves, even when we love God sometimes we fall grievously short in loving each other.
Sometimes we’re so prideful and picky that we treat our fellow humans like corn on the cob. When God leads us to cross paths with people whether in our families, workplaces, churches, on our sports teams, in the classroom, in prisons where we live, in homeless shelters where we stay, in grocery stores where we encounter people, on the streets when we walk, on airplanes and in airports when we travel, etc., we fall short in loving people.
We overlook them, judge them, criticize them, gossip about them, ignore them, reject them, withhold love and kindness from them, abandon them, overlook them, hurt them, complain about them and even to them, etc. because they are not the way we want and expect them to be. We don’t love them with the love of Jesus because they are not perfect. So just like imperfect corn at the grocery store, we “peel down the husks” then “toss them back in the bin.”
God doesn’t command us to be friends with and have relationships with and spend tons of time with everyone on this earth. But He does command us to love each other.
The question is, how good of a job are we doing at this? If we are falling short, we should seek and receive God’s forgiveness and strive to love people with God’s love. We are all imperfect. But we have a perfect God who is love who by His Holy Spirit will give His followers all the love we need to love others as He commands us to do.
Let us resolve to obey God’s commands, and let us make the decision not to throw the people God created back into the grocery store bin like bad corn.
Let us not be part of the worldwide tragedy of failing to love. Oh, let us love! Amen!
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”” John 13:34-35 NKJV
“Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,” 1 Peter 1:22 NKJV
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:8 NKJV