I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
✙ Jeremiah 31:3
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I suppose most believers can be forgiven for focusing on the wrong subject. The Bible talks about many things, after all—not all of them completely pleasant. But the fact of the matter is that the one grand, over-arching theme of the Bible, from beginning to end, is love. Even when it's not being talked about, it's there. God creates, leads, delivers, forgives, renews, becomes, and sends forth, all because of love. We sometimes understand love as a special feature of the Divine—like getting a car with a sunroof. But love isn't a feature, it is basic to who God is, a thing without which God would not be God.In fact, of all the things that are integral to God's Being, love is the one most closely identified with God. The Bible, after all, never tells us that "God is power," or "God is wisdom," or "God is justice." But it does tell us, in the clearest possible terms, that "God is love." To love is to be like God. To love is to possess God, and to be possessed by God. To love is to make God known in the world.
When we ask during the difficult times, such as during a pandemic, where God is, the answer is right there: God is present in those who love and who give of themselves that others might be happy, or might thrive, or might live.
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God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
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God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
✙ 1 John 4:16
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Prayer after thinking about today's devotion:
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O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ.
✙ Book of Common Prayer
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After your own thanksgivings & petitions, close with the Lord's Prayer.
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Text selection ©2020 Evangelische Brüder-Unität
Text selection ©2020 Evangelische Brüder-Unität