Listen

This message has been bearing fruit and growing among you since the day you heard and truly understood God’s grace, in the same way that it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world. You learned it from Epaphras, who is the fellow slave we love and Christ’s faithful minister for your sake. He informed us of your love in the Spirit.

Colossians 1:6b-8

Think

Several years ago, on a disaster relief trip to New Orleans, I sat outside a home our youth group was gutting after Hurricane Katrina. It was approximately 1,000 degrees, and I was dirtier and more tired than I had ever been. One of our volunteers pulled a surprise out of the cooler’s melting ice: plums and apples. I remember their cool, round feel in my hand; the bright reddish-pink and purple, when we’d been looking for so long at dried mud; the sweet, juicy drip down my chin; the way our whole group was quiet together just for a moment, save the crunching and the “mmms” …

Fruit is eye-poppingly beautiful and sweet and life giving. Our scripture tells us that acts of love bear fruit. When we love, something outside of us is born that is sweet and stunning and life giving. What a joy it is to partner with God to grow something so earth-changing, and the only seed we need are the seeds of love.

Shelli Latham

Pray

Loving Creator, open my eyes to the ways love makes the world more beautiful and more livable. And help me be on the lookout for opportunities to sow and share my own love, trusting that you can grow something stunning with it. Amen.

Go

It’s not so much what we have in this life that matters. It’s what we do with what we have. The alphabet is fine, but it’s what we do with it that matters most. Making words like “friend” and “love.” That’s what really matters.

Mr. Rogers

Today, may you do something that matters, trusting that you’re wrapped in the arms of our gracious God, whose number one rule is “Love!”