Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year B, RCL)

The psalmist is bossy: “Sing to the Lord a new song.”

The Christian faith often gives friendship short shrift.

Sometimes someone else has to start singing before we can.

What would the insurance-mandated boundary trainings that I’ve attended make of Jesus’ intimacy with his disciples?

1 John says the love of God comes first. Oh. Right.

Sometimes the life of abundant love is lonely.

In offering another refugee his citizenship, Chuong Nguyen is not submitting a transactional sort of sacrifice. He is giving a gift of selfless love.

Did you ever make a Möbius strip in grade school or high school? You may have seen one in the woodcuts of M.C. Escher. They are made by taking a strip of paper, say, eight inches long and an inch wide. You hold the two ends, give one a half-twist, then tape the two ends together to form a loop.

An ancient definition of God says that God is an intelligible circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

God loves the creation. In response the creation sings praise and adoration to God.

I have found myself dreading Facebook lately. With the general election beginning to churn, the competing posts are out: “Evidence of Obama’s socialist conspiracy!” “Republicans plan to inspect every woman’s womb!” Some are rather scary while others I quietly cheer; still others simply draw me into grief over how little Jesus seems apparent in any of it.

My desire to clean the kitchen was an exercise of love. Then my mom asked me to do what I was already planning to do—and my gift turned into affliction.

DeMarco experienced a lot of life before he came to care for his mother, and he will likely experience more when his time as caregiver ends. Yet I think of John 15:13.