Dear Family at Christ Community,

     We will gather together this Sunday to celebrate God’s love for us and His call for us to love others as He has loved us. As part of our worship in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, we will bear tangible witness to God’s love in the Lord’s Table. We will see yet again the evidence of His love in the broken bread that represents Jesus’ body given for us and the cup lavishly filled in the New Covenant fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Both elements will help to nourish our identity as God’s beloved and calling to invite others to become beloved as well. Leon Morris describes the love made visible in the table  in 1 Corinthians:  

Christians (think) of love as that quality we see on the cross. It is a love for the utterly unworthy, a love that proceeds from a God who is love. It is a love lavished on others without a thought whether they are worthy or not. It proceeds from the nature of the love, not the attractiveness of the beloved. The Christian who has experienced God’s love for him while he was yet a sinner (Romans 5:8) has been transformed by the experience. Now he sees people as those for whom Christ died, the objects of God’s love and therefore objects of the love of God’s people. In his measure he comes to practice the love that seeks nothing for itself, but only the good of the loved one. It is this love that the apostle unfolds.

     Pray for the Holy Spirit to remind you that you are God’s beloved and help you to bear witness to His love in worship this Sunday. Ask the Spirit to grant you the eyes to see others in the brokenness as Christ saw us in ours. Pursue opportunities for reconciliation. Offer to others freedom in forgiveness for offenses given and taken. Give thanks for God having first loved you and inviting you into His unfolding Redemptive Story for the life of the world!

In Christ,
Cameron