February 4, 2026
I have a drawer full of graphic t-shirts. One shirt features a graphic of a covered wagon and says, “Be patient with me. I’m from the 1900s.” Another shirt shows a row of broken crayons and includes the text, “Broken crayons still color.” Yet another features a cheshire cat and mad hatter with the text, “we’re all mad here.” Though I own a pile of such shirts, one stands out as my favorite. I love it for several reasons: It’s soft and comfortable, it’s purple (my favorite color), and I feel like it lets people know important information about me. To me, the “Jesus loves you” part of the shirt lets people know I’m a follower of Christ, and I believe he is loving and cares about his people. The “And I’m trying” part lets people know that I sometimes stink at following that “love your neighbor” command. It’s a hard command to follow. I’m great at loving my neighbor when he or she agrees with me, when he or she is nice to me or when it’s someone I like. I’m less great at it when it’s someone who disagrees with me or believes differently than me, someone who has wronged me in some way or someone I don’t like. While I fail regularly at loving my neighbor, I really do try. I regularly remind myself, “God calls me to love my neighbor, he doesn’t say I have to like him/her.” And a funny thing happens when I wear that shirt: I try harder to love others. While wearing my beloved Jesus shirt to the gym recently, I found myself tempted to make a sarcastic remark to another gym goer who was violating a gym protocol, but I stopped myself. “I’m representing Jesus here. I have his name on my shirt. I can’t do that.” I briefly thought about putting my hoodie back on and making the sarcastic remark I had in my head, but I instead chose to just smile at that other gym goer and move on. I acted like I had a heart full of Jesus’ love. |
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