Greater Love

These past few days have been a little weird.  Because for the past three months, we’ve been in this constant cycle of getting to go up to the hospital most days to visit our friend Michael.  Even from the beginning, it was a comfort to be able to see him so much.  It somehow helped just a bit in a circumstance that was incredibly difficult to work through.  But since Michael moved to Rehab today (hooray) I’ve slowly been realizing that that phase of our lives is over.

For the most part, it’s great.  We will work to transition to visiting him now at his Rehab facility.  It is a bit further and we know that Michael’s schedule will now be more full with therapies so we’ll figure out this new pace and work it in accordingly.  Thinking through things, today I realized that part of the way that I’ve worked through the emotions of Michael’s accident is to blog and to visit.  It was my best way of showing love, to him and to his family.  But I’ll share more on that in a bit.

 Last summer, we did a series of skits at our church.  Jeremy and I put them together and quite a few times, we called on our friends to come and help us with them.  Michael was key a part of the very first one that we did.  It was called, “Can I Help You?”  It was a basic premise.  There was a family that was struggling, with themselves and each other.

But thankfully, Jeremy had a product to sell that would help and revolutionize this family.  It was called, “Can I Help You?” and was available for the low price of $39.99, or as he put it, “Two low payments of just $19.99.”

Once this family took a sip of “Can I Help You?” they were immediately transformed.  All of their grumpy and angry and busy ways changed as they looked for ways to help each other.

Zack Skarka and Michael were the brothers and it was great to see the wonderful ways that they now got along.

It’s every mother’s dream to see her kids loving and helping each other, as you could clearly see on Gina’s face.

In the end, the whole family was transformed and greatly blessed by a little can of “Can I Help You?”

And this all brought me to my thoughts for today’s post.  There is this great verse in the Bible, in John 15.  Jesus is talking about God’s great love for us and how we should love others.  He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

I always kind of pictured this as a big, dramatic, sacrificial type of thing.  Like if a speeding bus was coming towards your friend, you would push them out of the way and lay your life down for them.  And it very well could mean something along those lines.

But reading it today, I also realized that I think it means laying your life down for others, in the little things too.  Looking for ways to love and serve your friends not only in big, grand gestures, but even in just the every day ways.  If you knew Michael or have read about him throughout these past three months, you know that he was definitely the kind of “lay your life down for your friends” kind of guy.

Who are the friends in your life that need you?  I’ve shared before, but I truly believe that God never intended us to do life alone, which is why He gave us each other.  As our family will continue to look for ways to show Michael and his family love in this new phase of rehab, I’d love to encourage you to do the same for the friends that you have in your life.

And I think that when you do, you will see more beauty and life will become much more full as God blesses you richly for obeying this beautiful command.

Prayers for Michael tonight could include help as he works to transition to Rehab.  He got there this afternoon and was working to settle in.  Prayers for those who will help him and for his family who will continue besides him would be greatly appreciated as well.