Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers,

love one another deeply, from the heart.

I Peter 1:22, NIV (1978)

Perhaps you have heard this one:

Question: How can you prove that dog is man's best friend, and not his human best friend?

Answer: Lock both of them in the trunk of your car for an hour and see which one is glad to see you when you let them out.

The joke is even funnier when you replace the words "human best friend" with the word "husband" or "wife".

Okay, this is pretty mean, but maybe dog is man's best friend because some men treat their dogs better than they do people. Part of this is because dogs are genuinely glad to see their owners, and they show it. You come home from work, and there your dog is to greet you. He jumps on you, licks your face and wants you to pet him. Our human friends, on the other hand, might not even look up from their cell phone, even if we haven't seen them since last month. Is it any wonder then that when greeting our pets we say things like, "whose a good doggy?" and do things like scratch their ears. If our friends and spouses treated us with half of the enthusiasm that our pets do, maybe we would say things like, "whose a good husband?" and scratch their ears as well.

I know I've perhaps gone too far with this illustration, but there is a point in here somewhere, and the point is this: Those of us who are Christians are a blessed people. We are also saved and, therefore, going to heaven if we will just remain faithful. Shouldn't we who have received such great blessings have such an outpouring of gratitude and love for our Father that it just spills over onto our loved ones? 

The passage above doesn't just merely say that we should love one another. It says that we should sincerely love one another! It indicates that this love is to be deep, and from the heart. This type of love is going to get attention, because every human being I know craves love, and especially when it is sincere and from the heart. We cannot help but like someone all the more who treats us with such devotion. 

You probably know such people. They are the ones who make you feel better just by being in their presence, You can tell by the way that they act that they are sincere, so when they tell you that they are glad to see you, you know that they really are. And because you know this, you will likely go to more effort to show them how much they mean to you. Not to reduce it too much, but it is like they way we treat our pets and the way they treat us. When there is a clear and obvious affection, we appreciate it and try our best to return it.

And, when we love one another deeply from the heart, this type of treatment is going to go a long way in building the types of relationships we all crave and appreciate. So why not give it a try? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain when you show people how very much you love and appreciate them. And, it will be much more effective than locking someone you love in the trunk of your car could ever be.