This week we saw that the resurrection of Jesus forms us into people who learn to stay in the stretch.

Peter calls us to “love one another deeply from the heart”—a love that is stretched beyond what is natural, comfortable, or automatic. It’s a love that reaches past surface-level kindness into something real and formed by Jesus.

And like physical stretching, there are moments where love hits resistance, where our instinct is to pull back. But resurrection life teaches us to stay there and let God shape something deeper in us.

This stretched-out love also requires what’s beneath the surface to be addressed—attitudes like envy, hypocrisy, and resentment that quietly limit our ability to love well. And it stretches us beyond our instincts: to bless when we feel wronged, to move toward unity when it would be easier to withdraw.

Finally, this love stretches into action, opening our lives through hospitality, serving others with what God has given us, and making space for people even when it costs us something.

At the center of it all is Jesus, the One whose love stretched all the way to the cross. Because He lives, we are being formed into people who stay in the stretch and love like Him.

Because He lives…we love deeply.