It is a wonderful thing if I do a nice thing for someone and they feel my love for them. But it is not really love if that nice thing cost me nothing. I am not suggesting it must cost much, just that it must cost something. When you love your Savior, it must cost you everything. When you love others it must cost you something. I say this because I don’t think we must give ourselves completely to others, only to Christ. If we gave ourselves completely to others we could only give ourselves to one person and then we would likely turn our eyes from Jesus.
It is all about Jesus and we love others because He loved us first and that is how we love him. And so, there will be many times you are inconvenienced, and the person does not even know! But wait, if they do not know, if they do not feel loved, then how is it love? It is love because you loved your Savior by being inconvenienced for someone else. He knows what it cost you, what sacrifice you made. If people knew all the time, we might become more prideful.
Just because it must cost you something doesn’t mean you don’t delight in giving up your convenience for someone else. It was an inconvenience for me to give up my bed and sleep elsewhere for many reasons (one of which being that I am a bit of a germaphobe and must change the sheets before sleeping in my bed again.) Still, I delighted in doing so for my friend. In this way I showed her love even though she may not have even realized it. Of course, loving a friend is far easier than an enemy. It is far more difficult to delight in being inconvenienced then. Still, we must love them too.
Finally, the reason I use the word inconvenience is because I think it more accurately describes how we love others on a daily basis. It’s not that we do great things all the time, as people say, but we do small things with love. Letting others go first in line, giving a ride to someone, washing others dishes, or taking out the trash are some ways I can be inconvenienced each day. I find myself thinking, “I’m not going to do that, they can do it themselves.” But then I am reminded that it’s not about be and to love I must be inconvenienced. Or I might think, “It would be easier for me if…” But then I am reminded that it’s not about me and to love I must be inconvenienced. What inconveniences you might differ from what does me. This is precisely why we don’t always know we someone is loving us by being inconvenienced.