Love, day by day

What a difference love can make

By Belen Velasco

One day I decided I would focus my whole day on the question: How can I love God today? In order to make sure I would remember, I wrote it down on a sticker and put it on my computer screen. It was the beginning of Lent, and it seemed an appropriate state of mind in which to enter the time of the year in which we celebrate Jesus’ amazing love for us and his resurrection. This is what I had in mind when, after lunch, I prepared to meet the man who had just installed our heating and who was coming back because the system wasn’t working properly. But another man showed up instead, a friend of his. The original serviceman to whom I had spoken on the phone had told us that we wouldn’t have to pay anything because the product was still under warranty. After his friend finished working on our heating, however, he told me I owed him $75.

I was taken aback. It didn’t seem fair to me that I should pay, but I also had very much in mind my resolution to love God. The person in front of me was who God wanted me to love in that moment. So I wrote him a check and gave it to him with a smile, but I also said, with as much kindness as I could, that I had called his friend because the product was under warranty and I hoped his friend could be clearer with his customers in the future.

The man called a little later asking if he could drop by in the evening. He said he had spoken with his friend and decided he should return the check. When he came he told me he had called his friend because he had felt that making us pay hadn’t been fair. “Our clients are more important than money,” he said. He even told his friend he would reimburse him out of his own pocket rather than make us pay. And then he said, “Money comes and goes, the only important thing is to love God.” He explained to me that he, too, believed in God.

This touched me. I told the man that today he had been an instrument of God for me. He had made me feel how much God loves me, and for this I was grateful. I talked to him about my lifestyle and my decision to put God at the center of my life, and we found we had much in common.

Every day I experience God’s love and his refusal to allow us to beat him in generosity. I also find tremendously comforting that there are so many people around us who also try to love God in what they do, day by day."

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