Prayer for the Week: By faith, we claim you to be the God of Love. Love is conceived within you, Lord, but it could not be contained within you. It took on flesh and lived among us. Love is how we know you, for it is in Jesus Christ that we encounter and find our lives confronted by the power and tenacity of your love. So many live their lives with a broken and impotent understanding of love. So many have been taught through life experiences that love is indistinguishable from hate, violence, abuse and selfishness. So many have encountered an empty word portraying itself as your most marvelous gift given to us. Throughout this Season of Lent, we seek a greater understanding of what scripture, specifically the life of Jesus, reveals about the nature of love. We desire to come alongside your love as the Spirit teaches and leads in the ways of love. By the truth of its nature, this love grows in its capacity to impact the world as it gives itself away in self-sacrificing acts. May Jesus be for us a mentor and model as we learn the ways of your love, O Lord, the One who loved us first. And may your Church, the Body of Christ, become known as the place where every human being will know of your relentless and unconditional love. This prayer is offered in the name of Jesus. Amen.
