Remembering
Our Scripture readings are from Psalm 51, Micah 6:1-8, and John 13:31-35.
Here are the words from John 13:34: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
Jesus told the disciples to love others, but he added that they were to love them as he did. Loving others is not an automatic thing anyway, but to love them as Christ did and does remains an act of faith. We are incapable of truly loving others on our own, because of human sin. God’s grace is an awesome thing and it led the apostle Paul to say, in Ephesians 2:4-5, that because of God’s mercy, God loved us even when we were dead in sin and made us alive together with Christ. God sees what we can become and looks past the sin in our lives. We have a loving God that hopes for us to remember his faithfulness. The prophet Micah became God’s mouthpiece in verses 3-4 of chapter 6 when he said: “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I weared you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you form the house of slavery. . .” If anyone should feel weary it is God when God looks at our wavering from his way. But God asks us to remember his grace and to live and love as Christ showed us to do. Let us today confess our failings and trust that God’s love and grace is sufficient for us. By God’s grace we can be Christ for others and it begins with our remembering God’s grace and mercy which desires our redemption through Christ. May that hope inspire us to love in Christ’s name. Amen.
