Compassion and Love

May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance.
2 Thessalonians 3:5

Loving others is not an easy thing to do, it requires lots of patience, sacrifice and committment. Yet, as children of God, we are called to love others just as Christ loved us. I really pray that God will prepare us for this journey of love because to love others is akin to a long marathon where you just have to keep running and not give up no matter how far it is. Love is not meant to end, it's meant to persevere.
However, sometimes loving others is tough; it's tough because there are people out there who we don't really feel like loving. They may be people we know and we don't feel like loving them because of a variety of reasons. These reasons may be because they are different from us in terms of thinking, behaviour, beliefs and many more. It may even be because loving them is hard work; it requires a lot of time and effort, which we would rather prefer to spend doing other things, especially things that we like.
In moments like these, we can't love or find it difficult to love because we may be loving from a wrong angle. We are trying to love from our hearts but we tend to forget that our hearts are deceitful and unclean (For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. Mark 7:21-22).
Thus, seen in this sense, we need God to cleanse our hearts and to direct our hearts into His love. Know that God is love, He is the source of love; of true love, sacrificial love and patient love. Thus, when we love, we should love with the love of God and only then can we love others with true compassion.