“Whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

This challenging truth—that I fail to love God when I fail to love the people that he has placed in my life—finally made sense to me in the summer of 2017. Up until then, I saw my relationship with God through largely self-focused lenses. My thought process went something like this: “If I want to be in good standing with God, I must avoid sin. Sin often rears its head in the midst of human interactions. So if I avoid people, I will avoid the drama, steer clear of sin, and stay on the straight and narrow path to heaven.”