Lent is a Time for Love

Devotional Archive

Day 1 - February 14, 2024

Lent is a Time for Love

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:12–17

When I was student teaching during my senior year at Ottawa (1988), my Middle School Music class was learning an old Quaker Song, “Simple Gifts.” It has a beautiful simple melody, which can be sung in a round. The young people loved it. It was their favorite song to sing, and the parents loved it too. I can still see the smiles. For me, and I think for many of them, it was a deeply spiritual experience.

Quakers, like the Amish and Mennonites, value highly the idea of being simple. They hold that simplicity is next to Godliness. I think they are onto something with that belief.  Christlike love is not complicated. Jesus’ command to love was straight forward, we are to love like He loved us. He gave his life for us – for our sins. He gave it willingly. His love held nothing back. The Lord God, King of the Universe, gave Himself for us that we might not die, but have eternal life. This is the very heart of our message to a lost and dying world. This is what love looks like.

I think it’s wonderful and a blessing that Ash Wednesday is on Valentine’s Day this year. What could be a better time to repent (turn) from how our sins have complicated our relationship with the Lord and others and renew our commitment to love as we have been loved than on Valentine’s Day? And what a witness this could be to the world of the humility we have learned from Jesus Himself to serve others sacrificially.

I don’t know about you, but when I serve others out of love, I have that same deeply spiritual feeling I had with those young people thirty-five  years ago. The joy in my heart is the same. I believe Jesus smiles at these kinds of loving acts of service. 

Simple Gifts: 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village, Maine.
‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d, To bow and to bend we will not be asham’d, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come round right.

PRAYER Heavenly Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Help us to love as You taught us to love. Give us the strength to give of ourselves for Your purposes without complaint or fan fair. May our lives glorify You, we ask in the powerful and matchless name of Jesus, amen.

submitted by Rev. Dr. Kevin Walden


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