Name One Person Each Morning

The command to love one another is broad enough that it can slide past a whole day without landing on anyone. Here is a practice that gives it a target. Each morning this week, before you look at your phone or begin the day's work, name one person in your church or Christian circle and ask what it would mean to love that person as Jesus has loved you today.

Keep it concrete. Loving as Jesus loved means serving without being asked, telling the truth kindly, and staying when it would be easier to leave. So the answer might be a phone call to someone who has gone quiet, a meal for a family in a hard stretch, a note of thanks to a volunteer who is never thanked, or simply sitting next to a person at church who usually sits alone. It should cost you something small and be done before evening.

Write the name down. At the end of the day, look at it and ask whether you did what you said. Do not skip Sunday. The person you name that morning may be sitting three rows in front of you. Over a week you will have loved seven people on purpose, and you will have begun to form the habit that Jesus said would mark his disciples to the world.