Now you are African, too.

I have a challenge for you today. It'll make a little more sense when I get around to telling you all about Day 4, but I want to go ahead and get the idea going in your head. What if we actually loved others as ourselves?

Jesus challenged us in Mark 12:31 to "love your neighbor as yourself,” but how often do we actually follow through on that? How often do we "love our neighbor as much as our neighbor loves us?" How do we treat strangers? How do we treat people who we disagree with? Enemies? People we do not even know?

When I was in Uganda, I was loved unconditionally by the people I met. No one knew me; few people could speak to me. But everyone loved me, and this was not because of anything I had done or because of who I was, but just because I was there and I was with them.

On Day 4, I was dancing with some children while a filter was being installed (more on this later). A few adults joined in and ended up teaching me how to dance. By the end of it, we were all laughing so hard that tears were streaming down our cheeks while we danced together. Before it was time to leave, one of the women I was with told me something I will remember forever: "Now you are African, too."

This is easily the biggest and best compliment I have ever, and probably will ever, received. She had told me that I was one of them. Love had united us. I spoke a different language, came from a different country, had a different color skin and different style clothes; yet, despite all of this, they had loved me. Just because.

This got me thinking, how often do I love people just because, and how often do I love people because of what they have done for me?

How about you?

I know one thing for sure, the love they showed me is the same love that Jesus had for all of us when he died on the cross. We didn't do anything to deserve his love, but he gave it to us, just because. We don't deserve to have our sins forgiven. Every last one of us is a sinner, an enemy of God, and the wages of sin is death, or eternal separation from God. Yet despite all of that, God loved us, His creations, so much that He sent his one and only son to trade places with us. We got Christ's righteousness, and he paid our debt.

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

That is real, unconditional, perfect love.

Strive for that. Love your neighbor, whomever that may be.