MARK 12:29-31

“The most important one [commandment],” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these”. 

TO PONDER

I feel this is the foundation of the theme of vocation for this week. 

Jesus establishes God as the one and only Lord.  And our task is to love him (despite our brokenness), love ourselves (in all our brokenness), and love our neighbours (in their brokenness) also.  Sometimes it’s in the deliberate act of loving others  that we find we can love ourselves, not because of what we have done, but because we have responded to the love of God for us, and we become blessed and humbled in that action of sharing.    

Loving ourselves, God, and others, cant come just from our touchy feely hearts or sentimentality, or just our spiritual high ground, or  just our rational mind full of knowledge, and not just out of our own physical strength.  But it comes when we act as a whole person, using all these parts of us,  in union  with self and God within us, for the good of ourselves, others and Gods kingdom. 

PRAYER

Jesus, we are so not good at this whole loving thing, but you are our God, you are One with the Father and Spirit, bless us with your grace and love today so that we can shine some light for you.  Amen 

Today's devotion written by Barb Niczynski, LifeWay Illawarra