Jesus said, “Let me give you a new command: love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognise that you are my disciples – when they see the love you have for each other”. (John 13: 34 – 35)

In his autobiography, music legend Ray Charles wrote of the kind of love Jesus showed us in his description of a woman he called Ma Beck: I wasn’t quite 15 when my mama died. That was the most devastating thing in my whole experience – bar nothing, period. I couldn’t get the sorrow out of my system … Ma Beck saw the trauma I was going through. So she took me aside and said, “Son, you know that I knew your mama. And I know she always taught you to carry on … Didn’t she tell you that?”

“I said, ‘Yes, ma’am’ and started to tear up. And Ma Beck kept after me. ‘Well, then, you also know that your mama didn’t want you going around just doing nothing and feeling sorry for yourself, ‘cause that’s not the way she brought you up. Isn’t that right?’ … That episode with Ma Beck shook me out of my depression. It really started me on my way. After that I told myself that I must do what my mum would have expected me to do”.

Loving as Jesus loves doesn’t make life easier, it makes life worth living – for us and for those we love.