"Love, Sweet Love"

Well, hello. I’m back. I have good news and bad news about my vacation time. We’ll start with the bad news: A three-day train trip from Toronto to Jasper, sadly, is not a good experience for an 85 year old with mobility issues (my mother). What started as a highly anticipated bucket-list experience – my mother, my sister and I travelling west by train – turned into a very difficult time for all of us, as my mother’s walker would not fit in the passageways of the train and she needed to be physically supported everywhere she tried to go. When asked what was the best part of the train trip, my mother replied, “Arriving in Jasper.” The good news is that our time in Jasper was awesome! By some miracle, we were able to gather 17 family members for a short holiday in the mountains to celebrate my mother’s 85^th birthday. There were four generations present, and it was a moveable feast of connection. The highlights for me were a stellar birthday party for my mother that included “Grandma Trivia,” and also watching my one-year-old grandson test his ability as a newly upright person. All that, plus what felt like the luxury of being on solid ground! As usual, it was good to be away, and it is good to be home!

This Sunday at Tobermory United, we’re going to celebrate gratitude and love. With the beginning of Lent next week as well as the annual meeting on Feb. 22, it’s a good time to celebrate all that you do to form, shape and uphold this community of faith. Our service will begin with a time of silence and prayer offered for the community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. as this community grieves and mourns in the wake of a school shooting there this week. We will join our hearts, from one small Canadian town to another. After that, though, we’ll talk about love, for what else is there? 

Our scripture, of course, will be 1 Corinthians 13:1-13: “Love is patient, love is kind . . . It bears all things, believes all things…” This passage is so often used in wedding ceremonies, but rather than romantic love, Paul was telling his friends in Corinth about a much greater, deeper and more powerful kind of love. It’s the kind of love that Martin Luther King Jr. was thinking of in his belief in a society whose base was “the Beloved Community.” It’s the kind of love that encompasses Jesus’ urgings to “love your neighbour as yourself,” and in his final instructions to his friends: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” It may seem naïve, but adopting the mantle of love could still save the world.

In the meantime, read 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and ponder the following:

1.      If you received a letter like Paul’s congregation in Corinth did, and this was part of it, would it change you? Would it change your behaviour?

2.      Where do you see love enacted in the world?

Image: designecology, pexels.com.