In order to "Live to Love," which was this summer's theme at Mission Indy, you have to learn how to love first. That's what God taught me this summer. Every day we studied a different "one another" passage: bear one another's burdens, accept one another, honor one another, share with one another, and serve one another. There is so much to be said about each one of these aspects of genuine love. It's funny because I always felt like one of the gifts that God had given to me was a love for people and a genuine care for even strangers. However, I began to realize as the summer progressed that there's a difference between caring for people and loving them the way Jesus would have. So this reality left me with not knowing how to do the very thing I had before felt like God had gifted me with! I found myself feeling very helpless and asking the questions: "God, how do I love these youth…interns…my family…the homeless…the way Christ would have loved them? Do they need a hamburger, a listening ear, for me to confront the sin I see in their lives, or maybe just a hug?...because on my own, God, I'm completely clueless as to what they really need."

Then I read 2 John and noticed that every time the word love is used in this seemingly insignificant book, it is coupled with the word truth. What a coincidence! This led my curious mind to ask the question, "well, then what's truth?" Maybe the answer seems rather obvious and simplistic but it really hit home to me. God is truth. Anything relating to him is true and anything else can be manipulated to be false by this world and its ruler.