LOVE NOTES

I have a couple of shoe boxes on the top shelf of my closet that contain notes – love notes. They are from my wife and span the thirty plus years we’ve been together. We met in a distant past where people still wrote letters to each other. Those love notes, in letter and card, tell our love story. Once, in a moment of insanity, I took them down to throw them away figuring that I knew well enough the sentiments the boxes contained. This interrupted our marital bliss for a moment, until I came to my senses and placed them securely back on the shelf. My wife knows more about devotion than I do.

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To read through even a few of these love notes is to be reminded of our life together. Keeping them, looking them over, is an act of devotion. Flowers on an anniversary, kind words said or written on special days, making a special meal for one another, are all acts of devotion, acts of love. These simple things tend the relationship of love, so it continues to grow strong and deep.

The same is true of our relationship with God. God’s love is constant, faithful, and given without a price. And yet, a relationship without mutual devotion is pretty one-sided. God invites us to love and be loved; to deepen our relationship with the very ground of our being. After all, who wouldn’t tend a relationship that gives so much?

To be devoted to God has been manifest for centuries in the practice of devotions. Daily prayer and reading of the love notes God has sent us deepens our love for and faith in God. Mysteriously, the more devoted we become through these practices, the more devoted we realize God is to us.

Next month we are going to launch a ministry that provides a daily opportunity to love God for a few minutes. Think of it like taking a moment to pull that shoebox off the shelf and look over a couple of notes that speaks a word of love to you.

The ministry will be called Love Notes. Every morning, six days a week (on the first day of the week, Sunday, we gather for worship), we will send out a video that includes a reading from the psalms and a prayer along with a reading from scripture and a short reflection. I’ll be doing the first few weeks. Others will join in later.

Our hope is that sometime during your day, you will find five minutes to experience a kind of love note from God. We hope that this devotion to spending five minutes being loved by God will bless your day and deepen your relationship with the source of love – the blessed, Holy Trinity.

As more and more of us devote a few minutes to loving God each day, our congregation will more and more deeply become the Beloved Community God calls us to be which will bless each of us with a foundation of love for the living of each day.

Soon, you will be invited to subscribe to Love Notes so it arrives in your email each morning. You will also be able to follow the playlist on YouTube is you like. If you are interested in receiving Love Notes, send an email to [email protected] that says, “Send me Love Notes.”

Pax Christi,
​Tim Olson – Lead Pastor