As we start off the new year, it occurs to me that someone needs your (and my) love. There are homeless and helpless men and women in every community. Some are hospitalized and all alone. There are any number of haggard folks like young nursing moms or dads trying to work two jobs. And there are a bunch of hypocrites too. People at work or in our neighborhoods who answer, “I’m just fine,” when in fact they are not.

What we need at the start of a new year is a commitment to practical love. Let’s call to mind the instruction from Jesus in John 13:34, “A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” 

Here’s a great story that highlights that truth:

“Come with me to a third-grade classroom. There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and suddenly, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet.

He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It’s never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they’ll never speak to him again as long as he lives.

The boy believes his heart is going to stop. He puts his head down and prays this prayer, ‘Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now and I am dead meat!’

He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered. As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Suddenly, Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy’s lap.

The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, ‘Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord! Now instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else, Susie.

At the end of the day, as they were waiting for the bus the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’ Susie whispers back, ‘I wet my pants once too.’”

You and I need to be watching for opportunities that are always around us-opportunities to do some practical loving.  And our motivation to reach out is simple. We wet our pants once too!