ruth on Love and Loss

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

In an interview discussing her most recent book Hamnet, the novelist Maggie O’Farrell shares a great analogy on grief. It started with research she needed to do on embroidery, an area in which she was...

I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young...

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

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

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 alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

A Valentine’s Day Tradition What better way to say, “I love you,” than passing your beloved some sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, and glycerin wrapped in a chalkly Necco wafer heart? Maybe some of you re...

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

Love cures people: the ones who receive love and the ones who give it, too.

To love is to will the good of another. .

If I asked you the same question I asked my patient Aaron—“What do you want?”—and you could for a moment put aside the predictable anxiety that comes with it, I’m confident that at some point in your ...

The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.

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

“God pity them both! and pity us all,  Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;  For of all sad words of tongue or pen,  The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’  Ah, well! for us all some...

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

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.

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

Though Jim was just a little older than Phillip and often assumed the role of leader, they did everything together. They even went to high school and college together. After college they decided to jo...

Lord – You are good …and Your goodness knows no bounds. When we were lost, You sought us out, found us and brought us home. When we were alone, You came near to us, and You gave us a new circle of fri...

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it i...

Pastor: I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; People: I will make His faithfulness known through all generations. Pastor: Dear friends, we should love each other,  People...

For Those Who Still Hope I am Sarah  Bitter and barren   Burnt out by this promise that never came Worn out from waiting  Laughing to hide the aching  Longing for these empty arms to hold a baby B...