Justin Bieber. Silly bands. Braces. Texting incessantly. Tween study Bibles. If you hadn’t guessed by this point, I have spent alot of time with middle schoolers lately.
This past week I traveled with 65 middle schoolers to ReCreation Ministries in Asheville, NC where we participated in missions by sharing the love of Christ through home repair. We painted, dug septic lines, roofed, and grew closer as a group and to God as we washed each other’s feet, had dance parties on the bus, and shared life with each other for a week.
As I returned and thought about our time there I was reminded of two verses:
The first provides a basic principle of how we should love:
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” – John 15:12
The second goes on to explain how God loved us:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
Throughout the trip we tried to show this universal love to the widow whose house we were working on, the staff at ReCreation, and all others that we encountered. And as we looked around to see how God was working in our lives, we continually witnessed God’s universal and self-sacrificing love being revealed to us through these same people.
