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Theme for tonight: LOVE
Since Sunday is Valentine’s Day, I’m using love as our theme tonight. It is easier to love our family and friends (most of the time), then people who think differently than we do—especially politically, and have different ideas about justice, racial equality and how they treat those who are different. We love because HE loved us. If we say “I love God” and hate another, we lie. If we do not love someone before our eyes, how can we love the one we cannot see. It is his command that the one who loves GOD must love his brother.
FIRST READING: A reading from the Gospel of John
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
PAUSE TO REFLECT:
PETITIONS:
God of Love
We are sometimes impatient, sometimes unkind.
We are quick to envy, and quick to judge.
Response: Loving God teach us to love.
God of love
We may be quick to anger
And hang onto how we’ve been wronged
Response: Loving God teach us to love.
God of love
When we are tempted to judge, to assume the worst
May love remind us to trust.
When we are tempted to despair, to assume all is lost....
May love remind us to hope.
When we are tempted to give up, to assume it will never happen
May love remind us to persevere.
Response: Loving God teach us to love. Amen.
Closing Reading:
A reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians
Even if I can speak in all the tongues of earth—and those of the angels too—but do not have love, I am just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy such that I can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, or if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own to feed those poorer than I, then hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, and
it is not snobbish; it is never rude or self-seeking; it is not prone to anger, nor does it brood over injuries. Love doesn’t rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices in the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.
Love never fails. Prophecies will cease; tongues will be silent; knowledge will pass away. Our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. But when I became an adult, I put childish ways aside. Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we will see face to face. My knowledge is imperfect now; then I will know even as I am known.
There are, in the end, three things that last: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest
of these is love.
Closing Song: Till I Met You | Laura Story
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