God gives us a triple commandment to love – to love God, of course. To love neighbor. And to love self which is the grounding for neighborly love. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Sudan suggests we don’t love ourselves very much. Congo invites us to reevaluate our relationship with loving ourselves. The Earth? The Middle East? The other political parties? Well, you get the picture. To love God and neighbor as self is an enormous assignment…commandment…calling. And thanks be to God, in Christ Jesus, we were created for just this necessary calling. How might we center love in our walk with Jesus today? What neighbor is missing from our prayer list? They could be down the street, across town, or on the other side of the world. Try loving them with a prayer lifted on their behalf. Who knows, you might find something lifting in you too.

God of all good things, we thank you for the good gift of love. For the ways it heals, stretches, disorients, reimagines, and pulls us closer to you and one another. Help us to fall in love with love and stay in love, transforming ourselves, our neighbors and the world with the best superpower you could give us. May love lead our conversations, inhabit our schools and workplaces, rule in our governing bodies, and take a seat with us when we gather for meals. May love wreck us and remake us to be more and more like love, in whose name we are bold to pray.  Amen.