Have you noticed that you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at him or her? For instance, if you see a wedding ring on a person’s hand, then you know that this person is married. Also, look at people’s feet. If a person is wearing dress shoes, then he or she is probably going to work or to church. But if the person is wearing tennis shoes, then he or she is probably going to school, or going out to play. Just by looking at the way a person dresses, we can usually tell if the person is going to play outside, or go to bed, or go to church. So you can learn some things about other people by looking at how they look on the outside.

But can you tell by looking at a person’s outside if he or she is a good person? No. There is no piece of clothing or decoration that all good people wear. Can you tell if a person is a follower of Jesus by just looking? No, generally we can’t. We should be able to, though. You know how? The Bible says that we can know who is a Christian by his or her love. Christians try to love others like Jesus loves us. In fact, the Bible says that we love because Jesus first loved us.

Did you know that love is something you catch? Just like a cold. You can’t love unless someone first loves you. For most of us, we learned to love, first of all, from our parents–as they held us in their arms when we were tiny babies. And we are so thankful for our mothers and fathers and all the people who love us. If they didn’t love us, we wouldn’t be able to love others. Most of all, we are thankful that God sent Jesus into the world to love us, and because we are loved, we are going to love others.