November 2024
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
My niece Victoria gets married in Tennessee this month, and I get to officiate at her wedding. I love performing weddings. I’m a big fan of love, and weddings are all about love. That’s why the church is involved with weddings. We are created in and for love, and love grows and deepens in covenant relationship. Making a promise to love encourages us to choose to love, each and every day. We make a covenant to be part of the church as well; we promise to pray for each other and to serve the church and the world in love. Jesus declares that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s good advice for life — important, transformative, and not always simple. So we practice. Marriage gives us a chance to practice love daily. Sometimes it’s joyful and easy; sometimes it’s exhausting. And our promises mean we’re in it for the long haul. Marriages don’t always last a lifetime; we mourn when they don’t. And we forgive ourselves and go back to practicing love where and as we can.
I have great hopes for Victoria and Garret. I ask your prayers for them, and while you’re at it, go ahead and pray for other marriages, and others in the church as we forge ahead in love, practicing, getting better at it, enjoying it and working at it. Thanks be to God for this gift, this challenge, this opportunity we’re given to love.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Cathy
