Piloting Faith: Love never gives up...
A Word for the Day...
This weekend I will be officiating the wedding of one of our best friends and her soon-to-be wife. Shaping a wedding service is always an honor and invites me to reflect on the couples over the years that I have been privileged to bless as a pastor.
At most weddings, we read from 1 Corinthians 13. In this passage, we find the 14 essential characteristics of love.
Love is essential: without it, nothing else matters.
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love is generous, not envious.
Love is appreciative of others, not boastful of self.
Love is humble, not arrogant.
Love is courteous, not rude.
Love is flexible; it does not insist on its own way.
Love is gracious, not irritable.
Love is merciful, not resentful.
Love is positive: it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
Love is tough: bearing, believing, hoping and enduring all things.
Love is perpetual: it never ends and never goes out of style.
Love is supreme, even greater than faith and hope.
Perhaps you need this reminder as much as I do. While remembering these at a wedding makes sense, it's in the days following that their meaning becomes most valuable.
- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight
Prayer for the Week
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
- Reinhold Niebuhr