I lead our time of worship/reflection in our small group last night on the theme of love:God's love for us, our love for God and each other.
The format of the reflection was a reading, a thought/question and then a response, by way of playing a song that people could sing/listen to/pray through (and then repeated again). The first set was to focus on how we love as receive love from God and the 2nd set was about loving others in the same way that we've been loved by God...
Reading: God Is Love
“My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day…
We are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. God loved us first.”
Exerts from 1 John 4
Thought:
As people of grace we love because we are loved. Loved by God so that we can love him back and one way St John suggests that we do so is by loving each other. Let us now receive God’s love and commit to loving him in the same way that he loves us…
Response:
This is my prayer, this is my cry
I want to go on loving you
All through the joy, all through the fire
I want to go on loving you
I want to go on loving you
Seasons may change, people depart
I want to go on loving you
In times of pain, when life is hard and when the journey seems so long
I want to go on loving you
Your love for me
New as the dawn, older than time
Stronger than death, greater than life
This love is mine
In everything, through all my life
I want to go on loving you
This is my prayer, this is my cry
I want to go on loving you
I want to go on loving you
Your love for me
New as the dawn, older than time
Stronger than death, greater than life
This love is mine
I’ll go on loving you x4
Reading 2: Let us speak of love
"Let us speak then of love. What does it mean to love something? If a man asks a woman, I'm quite open to other permutations of this formula, do you love me? And if after a long awkward pause and considerable deliberation, she replies with wrinkled brow "well up to a certain point, under certain conditions to a certain extent;" then we can be sure whatever it is she feels for this poor fellow it is not love. And this relationship is not going to work out. For if love is the measure, the only measure of love is love without measure.
One of the ideas behind love is that it represents a giving without holding back, an unconditional commitment which marks love with a certain excess. Physicians council us to eat and exercise in measured moderation and not to overdo either but there is no merit in loving moderately, up to a certain point, just so far all the while watching out for number one. Which is alas what we are often advised by a certain decadent new aged psychology.
If a woman divorces a man because he turned out to be a failure in his profession and just did not measure up to the salary expectations she had for him when they married. If she complains that he did not live up to his end of the bargain, well that is not the sort of till death do us part unconditional commitment that is built into marital love and the marital vow. Love is not a bargain but unconditional giving. It is not an investment but a commitment come what may.
Lovers are people who exceed their duty, who look around for ways to do more than is required of them. If you love your job you don't just do the minimum that is required, you do more. If you love your children what would you not do for them? If a wife asks a husband to do her a favour and he declines on the ground that he is really not duty bound by the strict terms of the marriage contract to do it, that marriage is all over except for the paperwork. Rather than rigorously defending their rights lovers readily put themselves in the wrong and take the blame for the sake of preserving their love.
Love, St Paul said in his stunning hymn to love, is "patient, kind, not puffed up or boastful, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. A world without love is a world governed by rigid contracts and inexorable duties, a world, God forbid, where the lawyers run everything.
The mark of loving someone or something then is unconditionality and excess, engagement and commitment, fire and passion…” Jack Caputo [HT to emergent village podcast on theological, philosphical conversation]
Thought/question:
We all follow God up to a point. We all love God and each other up to a point. Jesus calls us to go with him beyond that point. Where and with whom is the Spirit asking us to go and love unconditionally, love maked with an excess?
Response:
Multiply your love through us
To the lost and the least
Let us be your healing hands
Your instruments of peace
May our single purpose be
To imitate your life
Through our simple words and deeds
Let love be multiplied
Multiply your love through me
To someone in need
Help me Lord to freely give
This grace that I’ve received
Let my single purpose be
To imitate your life
Through my simple and deeds
Let love be multiplied
Let us see your kingdom come
To the poor and broken ones
Let us see a mighty flood
Of justice and mercy
Oh Jesus
Let love be multiplied
Let love be multiplied.
Multiply your church through us
To the ends of the earth
Where there’s only barrenness
Let us see new birth
Use us as your labourers
Working side by side
Let us see your harvest come
Let love be multiplied
Let us see your kingdom come
To the poor and broken ones
Let us see a mighty flood
Of justice and mercy
Oh Jesus
Let love be multiplied
Let love be multiplied
Let love be multiplied.
Multiply your love through us
Multiply your love
Thanks so much for transcribing the Caputo quote. I had a note to myself to do this, but I thought I'd check online first. I found it powerful when I heard it on the mp3, and hope to use it in the future. Thanks again! God bless!
Posted by: Rich | 21 November 2007 at 05:11 AM
Thanks Rich, it's a great quote and you are more than welcome :)
Posted by: Paul | 22 November 2007 at 02:14 AM