Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7
Beloved God, we see evidence throughout the world of how hard it is for some neighbors to love one another. We find continued difficulty in seeing You in each other. We worry that our hearts are incapable of loving the way You have called us to do so. We become incapacitated by our imperfect abilities to love.
And, yet, You call us to love one another. You tell us love is love, and to love is love, so that the light within us becomes brighter when we acknowledge and love the light within our neighbor.
Beloved God, help there to be more love in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, where governments are committing, or at least permitting, acts of terrorism.
Beloved God, be known in Haiti, where a cholera epidemic has already sickened 800,000 people. Let there be love amongst the workers attempting to vaccinate many more people than this against cholera.
Beloved God, help the people of Israel to love their neighbors: Recent proposed legislation would label the loudspeakers used by mosques to summon the faithful as “noise pollution” and would ban them.
Beloved God, may you help the US President-Elect and his transition team to love their neighbors. Many of their actions have caused discomfort among American citizens and those who wish to become citizens.
Beloved God, let your light shine through in measles vaccination campaigns, so that 350 children do not die each day of this preventable disease.
Beloved God, let us love one another:
- The dying and the grieving;
- new parents and those who struggle to conceive;
- the hungry, the infirm, and the joyous;
- the travelers and the homeless;
- those who do not look or talk or pray like us.
Let us love one another as you love us.
Let us show those who do not believe in a God of love that love and light are possible.Amen
And let us not feel incapacitated by love, but emboldened.
Amen.
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