1 john on Falling in Love

John Newton, the former slave ship crewman turned pastor and writer of Amazing Grace, fell in love with a particular pronoun in the well-known passage of John 3:16.  He put it this way, “If I read ‘Go...

There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

In 410 AD, Rome fell to the barbarian Germanic tribe known as the Visigoths, led by King Alaric. The idea of a “Christian” city (and empire) falling was a terrible defeat, not just militarily, but als...

In love. What does that even mean? “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them. I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See the probl...

​​Heavenly Father, we come to you acknowledging our own unrighteousness.  We know that we fall short of your glory and your desires for us.  Still, we know that you love us with the love, humility, an...

Lord Jesus Christ, you call us to high standards, and we continuously fall short. You tell us to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile; to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. No...

"When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable."

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.

Love makes people do crazy things. The stories we tell in literature and film are full of examples of the crazy things people will do for love. Love empowers Odysseus through madness and suffering, dr...

Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does.

After C. S. Lewis lost his wife Joy to cancer, he wrote these words about the inextricable link between love, suffering, and vulnerability: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your...

You shall love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

It’s difficult for people to love the real you when you are covering up who you really are. We connect with others when we take our mask off and let others in.

Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair. So sung a little Clod of Clay, Trodden with the cattle’s feet; B...

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.

The question of performance-free love transcends ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status. “Am I forever loved for who I am? Is the background elevator music to our hearts.

All-loving God, we confess our motivations are often not influenced by your love. We act according to what will bring us the best outcome. We love ourselves before we love you. Help us to grow deeper ...

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.

Love is not an affection feeling, rather it’s a steady wish for the other’s good as far as it can be obtained.

Only the beautiful is loved . . . we cannot help loving what is beautiful.

What I’m learning about love is that we have to tackle a good amount of fear to love people who are difficult. .

“Most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love,” writes John Steinbeck in East of Eden, a book full of characters who crave the love of a father, a brother, a lover, a son. The experience of fu...

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assura...

You cannot love me more You will not love me less You love me fully Now and always Help me accept the gift of your love Help me trust it Help me accept it fully There’s no need to earn your love...