10-12-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
October 12, 2025
Service—that’s our focus today in worship. In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, he wrote, “…serve each other through love. All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus was building on the ancient words of Leviticus 19, for us to love another, he was not simply inviting us to feel an emotion. Yes, the experience of love is, in part, internal, but it is mostly external. In some of the rather short weddings I am invited to do at the courthouse next door to the church, I talk about love as a word that is nearly impossible to define without specifically naming the concrete things we do to express and embody love. I can tell my wife over and over again, “I love you,” but the love I feel is hopefully experienced by her in small acts of kindness, moments of encouragement, taking time to celebrate something joyful I her life, while also crying with her in moments of sadness. Am I still learning how to love as Jesus taught me to love? Absolutely! But I hope there are things I do that others can point to and say, “Yes, there is someone who loves as Jesus taught us to love.”

Continue to teach me to love and to strive toward a greater and more perfect expression of love. Help me, Lord God, as I acknowledge my failures and seek to do better with each passing day. And of course, thank you for loving me on my best days and absolute worst days. Amen.