Friday 12 May 2023

Today is Friday the 12th of May in the fifth week of Easter.

Paul Zach with the Porter’s Gate sings, ‘The Greatest Commandment’.


Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and soul and mind
And love your neighbor as yourself
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and soul and mind
And love your neighbor as yourself
Let us be known, let us be known
By the way we love
Let us be known, let us be known
By the way we love
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and soul and mind
And love your neighbor as yourself
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and soul and mind
And love your neighbor as yourself
Love the Lord your God (Let us be known)
With all your heart and soul and mind (Let us be known)
And love your neighbor as yourself (By the way we love)
Love the Lord your God (Let us be known)
With all your heart and soul and mind (Let us be known)
And love your neighbor as yourself (By the way we love)
Love the Lord your God (Let us be known)
With all your heart and soul and mind (Let us be known)
And love your neighbor as yourself (By the way we love)
Love the Lord your God (Let us be known)
With all your heart and soul and mind (Let us be known)
And love your neighbor as yourself (By the way we love)
Love, love, love, the greatest commandment is
Love, love, love, the greatest commandment is
Love, love, love, the greatest commandment is love

Today’s reading is from the Gospel of John.


John 15:12-17

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

“I have called you friends.” How does it feel to hear those words from Jesus?

Love. Sometimes difficult. Sometimes practical. Sometimes painful. Sometimes sacrificial.
Deep within us, we need God’s help to love. Can we detect Christ in other people… in ourselves? Would that help us to love? We could ask for the gift to see Christ in others, and in ourselves.
Where are you challenged to show love when you least feel like it?
Jesus is about to face the ultimate challenge - to lay down his life. And he’s talking about love! Stay with that outrageous thought.

Where do you see sacrificial love in the world around you today?

As I hear the passage again, I consider what needs to develop in me in order to love well.

Whom will I come alongside today? Who will I learn to love? I ask God for help to love, in these closing moments of prayer.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.