LOVE Lent 5

Scripture

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:5-9 

Reflection

The overarching theme within scripture is that our love for each other is a reflection of God's love for each and every one of us.  The Torah's commandment to love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our might is the essence of Judaism's understanding of the obligations to God.  We are created and loved by God and so we love God in return.  

The Golden Rule of loving others as we would like to be loved is the bond that unites all the faiths of the world, from east and west.  Love is indeed, friends, the foundation of our lives in community, and as ensouled beings made in the image of a loving God.  Love is the reason God has blesses us with free will, so that we might choose to love God and choose to love each other.  Without free will love is impossible.  Free will makes love possible, and love makes faith possible, and faith makes a future for all of us possible.  

Let us, as a community devoted and enveloped in God’s love, embrace a way to love others freely and joyously, and without expectations.

Poem

God's Patient Love  (Poet Unknown)

God's patient love! Misunderstood
By hearts that suffer in the night.
Doubted - yet waiting till Heaven's light
Shall show how all things work for good.

God's endless Love! What will it be
When earthly shadows flee away,
For all eternity's bright day
The unfolding of that Love to see!

Prayer

Lord, you have said
that to truly love you
then I must also
love my neighbour,
which can be difficult
when we disagree
or lifestyles clash.
Yet in overcoming
those difficulties
it is possible to see
the miracle that you
love someone like me.
Teach us to love, Lord,
as you have loved us
that this world might be
a better neighbourhood
in which to live and share.

From faithandworship.com