Jesus commanded us to love our enemies. What does “love” mean? Are all forms of love the same? If they are not, what is the particular nature of the love we should exhibit toward those who vex us or hurt us or deliberately thwart us? Upon these questions we shall focus today in our life-journey of faith. Therefore let us, with confidence, worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
We praise Thee, O God of love, for placing within our hearts and minds the ability to reflect that love in how we live. We thank Thee for all the various kinds of human love, and for all the various kinds of people to whom that love may be offered. We thank Thee for people in biblical times who proclaimed and exhibited and lived love, and especially for Jesus, through whom we see Thy love for us most fully illustrated. Help us, O God, to love as he did, and to live as he did. Through his influence in our lives, use us to become little Christs to our neighbors, friends, and family members, so that Thy kingdom may come on earth, as it also exists in eternity with Thee.
As we pray for an expansion of love, we also confess that each of us and all of us together fail too often to act in loving ways. Personally we hurt one another either deliberately or without intention. Corporately, as nations, we jostle and spar with one another, making threats and too often acting on those threats. At this time we pray especially for our nation and for North Korea, and particularly for the two leaders of these two nations. We ask that somehow, through the indwelling of Thy spirit within each of them, these two bellicose men may come to their senses, and pull back from the dangerous impasse into which their bellicosity is leading the entire world. Where individual thoughts and impulses have enormous implications and consequences for countless millions of innocent people throughout the world, may Thy will prevail.
We pray for the legions of diplomats of all nations who work behind the scenes, attempting to maintain peace and stability in their own countries and in the world community. Grant to them the wisdom, persistence, and patience that is necessary to balance national interests with international concerns. And as we pray for large issues, we pray also for smaller, individual issues: for the ill, who cry out to Thee from beds of pain; for the dispirited, who have lost their zest for life; for the spiritually thrown, who once having had a strong faith, have lost it; for the poor and homeless, the lost and lonely, the grieving and the anxious. Use us to attend to the needs of others as best we can, so that we may become instruments of peace and wholeness. These prayers we offer in the named of Jesus, now joining in the prayer he taught us, saying, Our Father….