Clark County residents, never take for granted, what occurred Thursday.

On the National Day of Prayer, we prayed for the entire community, its leaders and more. We prayed for the U.S., and its leaders and more. All of this on the courthouse steps.

Wow, how different from 95 percent of the counties in Kentucky and the nation.

Thank you God and thank you city and county leaders.

This year the theme was #LoveOneAnother.

Is there a more complicated word than love?

We talk about loving God, loving UK sports, loving pizza, loving hot dogs and loving your wife.

At church, we sing about the love of God that’s “greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.

Then we get in the car and head home, radio on, listening to songs of love: selfish and self-centered love; one-sided, hopeless love; deceit and cruelty masquerading as love; and once in a while a mature, other-centered love that stands the test of time.

No wonder we take the word love for granted.

Even though love appears 567 times in the New Testament it is more than a spiritual sensation.

This love wears work gloves and handles everyday nuts and bolts of life. It’s highly practical.

It hugs the lonely, feeds the hungry, tends the sick, comforts the sorrowful and loves the unlovely.

It is kind, long-suffering, pure and perceptive, positive in outlook.

G.K. Chesterton wrote the great lesson of the story of “The Beauty and the Beast” is “a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”

God’s love is “agape” love.

One of the best definitions of “agape” I’ve heard is this: “It is to power to move us toward another person with no expectations of reward.”

So wouldn’t it be amazing if Christians were as obsessed with God’s brand of love as society is obsessed with the world’s concept of love?

I have a dream. I dream of a Statue of Liberty-type of community.

Arms outstretched saying bring to me your rich or poor, male or female, married or single, black, Asian or white, hurting or whole. Give us a powerful Godlike love that was wide enough to include everybody and deep enough to meet needs.

So Clark County, how are we doing? Who have you reached out to help this past week? Who have you loved by being there for them in presence, in prayer or with money? How inclusive is our love? Do we have a circle drawn around our love?

Well, I love these people, but those people, they can get somebody else to love them. How inclusive is your love?

Bobby Kennedy in 1968 spent six hours working one day in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Harlem.

After he had worked there, dirty and sweating, this newspaper reporter asked him “Why are you doing this?” Bobby Kennedy replied, “I have found out something I never knew. I found out that my world was not the real world.”

Clark County is like Harlem. There are people in Clark County who don’t have enough to eat.

There are people in Clark County who don’t have a bed to lay their heads on.

There are people in Clark County struggling to hang on to their marriage.

There are people in Clark County struggling to hang onto sobriety and destroying themselves with drugs.

There are people in Clark County struggling to hang on to emotional equilibrium. Single people, divorced people, widowed people in Clark County are struggling to hang on.

There are parents in Clark County who are struggling with children who are breaking their hearts.

Children are struggling to survive divorce or abuse or parents who don’t care about them.

There are people in Clark County struggling to hang onto their business.

There are people in Clark County struggling to hang on to their home, to their car for one more month.

Friends if Clark County is a community of love then we have to be an emergency room for hurting people, and we love them back to health.

In the first century, it was the people who finally got the love of Jesus in their hearts and hands that changed the world.

And for us in the 21st century, this is no small thing we have been invited.

To the churches, if every Christian in Clark County for a month, for two weeks, would love the people around them the way we’ve been called to love, would forgive anyone they’ve been holding anything against, would think of helping others the way God expects.

If every Christian would quit asking and be generous with others, and compassionate to others as God has called us.

If every father would go home and be the father and every mother go home and be the mother God called them to be, and every son and every daughter would submit to the authority of their parents as you submit to Christ.

If we all would submit to others as Christ has called us to submit to Him,

If we would just do some basic things in Clark County and the United States of America the difference would be felt. We have everything we need and a handful, a handful of disenfranchised Jewish people, impacted the world, survived the destroying of their temple and the Roman Empire and ultimately it was the love of Jesus through their hearts and hands that captured the attention.

So pray every morning, “Heavenly Father, here are my hands, here are my feet, here’s my eyes. Here’s my mind, here are my resources and here’s my pain. Here’s my story, and I am making myself wholly available to You, I want to help someone today. I want to be as generous as you want me to be, as available as you want me to be, as committed as you want me to be, as authentic as you want me to be, as forgiving as you want me to be, as loving as you want me to be.

Or you can say as Jesus, “Not my will but yours will be done.”

So let’s not be selfish consumers, let’s be humble followers, and let’s make a difference.

People of Clark County, hey churches, don’t you want a community that does that? Maybe we can help change our little world of Clark County and may it spread throughout the USA.

And a community obsessed with love will have Kentucky and the rest of the USA sit up and take notice.

It is simple, Love God and Love Others, so let’s do it and may it begin with me! #LoveOneAnother!

Whit Criswell is pastor of Cornerstone Christian Church. He can be reached at getfiredupwhit@gmail.com or 859-621-9012.