Loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength is the most important commandment, but what does it look like? It looks like my grandmother, Myrtie Bryan. In the morning, as soon as she got out of bed, her knees would hit the floor and her prayers began. Then she moved to the kitchen listening to preaching or humming a hymn as she prepared the best biscuits.  Whether she was working in the garden, picking flowers for the church, or gathering clothes for those more needy than her …whatever her task she set out to do it for the Lord. I remember as a little girl having evening devotionals with  her. Someone would read the scriptures and on many occassions she would join the reader by quoting along with them. Then she would pray for what seemed then like hours, again on her knees. She didn’t take her relationship with the Lord lightly. She always put herself in a more humble position as she prayed either on her knees or with her head bowed. Ask any of her forteen grandchildren and they will tell you what an amazing woman of God she was. She was a simple woman, who lived in a simple house, who loved the Lord her God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength and changed the world one prayer at a time.

Loving God with all you are is a daily experience. It is not a task to be checked off, but a relationship to be tended. As the chorus of Grandmother’s favorite hymn says, “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” We love Him because He first loved us. Once you grab the depth of God’s love for you it changes the way you love him. You want everything to be done for him.