relationships and community on Receiving Love

To love is to will the good of another. .

We frequently repress our desire for love because love makes us vulnerable to being hurt. The word passion, which is used to express strong loving desire, comes from the Latin root passus, which means...

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.

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

Love hinders death. 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. Love is ...

Because of His measureless love He became what we are in order to enable us to become what He is.

The Sermon on the Mount contains some of the most difficult ethical injunctions in all of scripture. Many of us do not know how to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Martin Luther K...

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.

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...

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...

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not be...

Mark Rutland humorously recalls a survey asking Americans which words they most long to hear. As expected, the top response was, “ I love you. ” The second was, “ I forgive you .” ...

“Would I rather be feared or loved? That’s easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”

The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

The only reason God would have had for creating us was not to get the cosmic love and joy of relationship (because he already had that) but to share it.

John Berkley told a story about how he loves live professional choir concerts. At one concert, the conductor asked if anyone in the audience was there celebrating their birthday. Now, it was actually ...

Almighty God, we come to You now as Your children because we know we are broken and sinful and need You so much. We have broken our relationship with You and have done things that have hurt You, other...

Fear Not! In the first Advent God keeps saying, “Fear not!” It’s a word we need to hear today too. Zechariah and Elizabeth were told that after decades of waiting they’d finally have a child in thei...

He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.

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

Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each o...

Peter Greave (1910-1977) was a British national who endured a challenging and tumultuous life, which took a severe turn in 1939 when he contracted leprosy while stationed in India, also his birthplace...

The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope."

The Christian Gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same ti...

We bring before God those times when God’s Kingdom and love have not shaped our lives, asking to be forgiven and made new. Lord Jesus, too often this week you have only been a small part of our live...

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

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson asks an important question: how do you mourn the losses in your life: How do you mourn? ...

Properly understood, adoption is one of the most precious, heartwarming, and practical of all our theological beliefs… [It] focuses our attention on a relational image and points us to the joy and ass...

God of our hearts, Lord of nations and Creator of worlds; Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When You redeemed us and called us each by name, You made us a family—united by your love and grace. Across towns...

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...