by Rhonda Rhea @RhondaRhea

As if we don’t have enough viruses in the current culture, I’m just out the other side of an ick cold and flu bug. We passed this bug through extended family and extended-extended family, petri dish style. Ah, sharing culture.

Troubling though the flu bug was, the meds might’ve been even more so. Have you read the warning labels on some of those? It’s not that I’d planned to operate any heavy machinery anyway, but still. And who is that person who has to be continually reminded not to get all heavily medicated and then climb onto a forklift? Starve a cold, feed an accident waiting to happen?

Wow. Those warnings. … But what if?

What if instead of nausea, vomiting, and varying intestinal distresses (oh, the atrocities)—what if they came up with a medication that had a warning label something more like, “may cause extreme kindheartedness and prolonged loving attitude”? Why do we hardly ever see that?

I guess it’s mostly because a loving attitude is not one of those side effects that “just happens.” We really do have to cultivate it. We have to encourage it to grow. Sounds a little moldy but hey, that’s how we got penicillin. And it could change the culture—in our churches, outside our churches, in our families, in our neighborhoods, on our social media—everywhere and all around. There’s power in the love of God, and there is a special blessing in seeing His children love each other by that power. It’s culture-altering. It’s world-altering.

We’re instructed all through the word of God to love each other. To love each other with forgiveness. To love each other with sacrificial service. To love each other with generosity, caring for each other’s needs. We’re told to love each other the way Christ loved us. We’re told even further to love each other by coming alongside and helping carry the loads of others. “Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ,” (Galatians 6:2, HCSB).

Loving, feeding, helping each other—it’s not simply a good lifestyle plan. As followers of Christ, it’s our law. We have an obligation to love, and even to climb underneath the heavy load of a friend in trouble.

No one understands bearing another’s burdens like our Jesus does. He climbed under the impossibly heavy weight of the sin of the world. He fulfilled the law to offer us grace. Our Savoir did that out of His great love. Then He told us to love with that same kind of love. In John 13:34, Jesus said, “A new command I give you:  Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

As we’re willing to step into the difficult, ugly, germy battles of another, we’ll find He will feed us in every way we need to be fed. And He can starve our selfishness every place it needs to die. Cultivating love. It really will change and grow our culture.

Meanwhile, back near the petri dish, I’m all better now, thanks. I feel so good I’m half tempted to go out and operate some heavy machinery. Just because I can.

Rhonda Rhea is an award-winning humor columnist for great magazines such as HomeLife, Leading Hearts, The Pathway, and many more. She is the author of 19 books, including the popular romantic comedies co-authored with her daughter Kaley Rhea, Off-Script & Over-Caffeinated and Turtles in the Road. Rhonda and Kaley have also teamed up with Bridges TV host Monica Schmelter for the Messy to Meaningful books and TV projects. Along with Beth Duewel, Rhonda writes the Fix Her Upper series, and she also co-authored Unruffled: Thriving in Chaos with Edie Melson. She speaks at conferences and events from coast to coast, serves on many boards and committees, and stays busy as a publishing consultant. Rhonda says you can find her living near St. Louis drinking too much coffee and snort-laughing with her pastor/husband, five grown children, and a growing collection of the most exceptional grandbabies.