"As I Have Loved You"

The Savior was once asked what the greatest commandment of all was.  He answered that the first was to love God and that the second was to love our neighbor as ourselves.  How do we love others?  How do we show them we care?  Those are questions that I have tried to reflect upon and learn from so that I can find happiness; for if we do not, then we suffer and are miserable and lonely.  I came across this poem that I think explains that idea.  It is called "The Cold Within" written by James Patrick Kenny:

Six humans trapped by happenstance … in bleak and bitter cold.

Each one possessed a stick of wood, or so the story’s told.

Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back,

For of the faces round the fire, he noticed one was black.

The next man looking cross the way, saw one not of his church,

And couldn’t bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes; he gave his coat a hitch.

Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought of the wealth he had in store,

And how to keep what he had earned from the lazy, shiftless poor.

The black man’s face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from his sight.

For all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white.

The last man of this forlorn group did naught except for gain,

Giving only to those who gave was how he played the game.

Their logs held tight in death’s still hand was proof of human sin,

They didn’t die from the cold without. They died from the cold within.

Now compare that to the peace that the Savior gives.  Some of His last words to the apostles were, "A new commandment...That ye love one another; as I have loved you (John 13:34)." 

How has the Savior loved us?  More than we will ever be able to understand.  How must we love our neighbors?  Just as Jesus Christ does.  How can and must we show our love?  Whatever it takes.