Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another intensely from a pure heart. // 1 Peter 1:22
It’s amazing what a drive with the windows down to the music of Taylor Swift can do for a student’s conversion. That was the case that particular night when we drove one of our students around town. “I have never had so much fun!” she told us. Recently these small moments have been sitting more deeply in my heart. Perhaps because I’ve been so moved by the need for true authentic friendship.
While I’ve seen conferences, Bible studies, or intense conversations through which Jesus loves our students, I have also seen Him do so through a car ride down I-65 South while belting out a break-up song. Or through 1 a.m. conversations about boys and giggling about our friends’ crushes. Or through canceling Bible study and running to the grocery store to get ice cream because it was just that kind of day. All simple moments that may pass us by, but simple moments of pure and absolute sisterly love.
As I sit in a season where I’m tempted to despair on how to love those around me, He reminds me that those who loved me best in hard seasons did so in the most human ways. Whether by a friend sending me a children’s book in the mail or a simple invitation to the grocery store, Jesus has encountered me in that sincere brotherly love from today’s First Reading (see 1 Peter 1:18-25). This love He is inviting us into is often so simple, so human, so mundane that we can miss His invitation to love radically in this way.
Sister, how has the Lord loved you through simple and pure sisterly love? Ask the Lord for just one way in which you can love a friend today. Either by having a mini dance party or calling a night in to watch Pride and Prejudice, ask Jesus to show you how He wants to love those around you through your own particular, unique, and unrepeatable love. You never know what miracles can come from a simple and pure gesture of love.
Mariana Pimiento is a Colombia-born storyteller and artist. She enjoys big dinners with her Colombian family, talking about Theology of the Body, and any chance for a bonfire. The preaching Dominican friars brought her back to the Catholic faith while a student in New York City. Mariana served several years as a FOCUS missionary and now continues college ministry work in Nashville. Find out more about her here.
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