Tag: unconditional love

Fourth Sunday of Advent 2025 – Candle of Love

by Steve Harsh, posted in Advent, Christian Discipleship, Christmas, Faith and Values, spiritual discipline

In the beginning, God fell in love with creation, and pronounced it very good.  Like romantic adoration, God’s eternal love is blind to human betrayal, rebellion, and stupidity.  When God’s children ignore the prophets and break every covenant offered to us, God continues to love us like a star-struck lover.

We celebrate Advent and Christmas every year to remind us that God still so loves the whole world that He comes to share the risks and sacrifices of being a vulnerable human being. 

In the dark days of December, when wars and senseless violence dominate the news, God’s love simply grows brighter and stronger.  The Advent candles remind us that we are all created in the image of God, and the essence of our God is unbounded, unconditional love. 

So on this final Sunday of Advent, the circle of the wreath is completed.  We relight the candles of Hope, Peace, and Joy.  And today we light the Candle of Love, because the greatest of these is Love. 

[Light all four candles]

Please join me in the prayer on the screen:

O dear God, lover of our souls, we are undeserving and unworthy of your radical love.  Our souls our willing, but our flesh is weak.  Please sweep us off our feet again in your loving embrace.  Help us to share in your wild and crazy romance with this broken world.  Let these candles rekindle in us the dream of your beloved community, so we can throw open the gates of love to all of your weary, hopeless children.  Remind us once more that the Babe of Bethlehem still calls us to love one another, in the same reckless, unconditional way that you love us.  Amen

Northwest UMC, Columbus, Ohio

Prayer for Father’s Day 2025

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, Gratitude, prayer, purpose

O Heavenly Father, we use many metaphors to describe your holy mystery, terms like Father, Mother, Parent, Spirit, Friend, all pointing to your very essence which is Love. Today we honor those who can be one reflection of your love, the men who are or were fathers to us, biological or honorary. Many earthly fathers or father figures are great sources of wisdom, encouragement, and love, and for them on this day especially we offer thanks and praise.

But, unfortunately not all fathers are created equal. Some, because of their own trauma, are less than Hallmark papas, and because of that this day can be difficult for some of us. Where there is strife or pain associated with such relationships we pray for comfort, forgiveness, and reconciliation where those things are possible. For others we simply ask for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.

Ideally, we pray for the closeness that you, God, had with Jesus. He referred to you with the term of endearment Abba, which is translated in English as “Daddy.” For fathers and those who fill that important role we pray for the wisdom, closeness, and love reflected in your holy relationship with Jesus. We know none of us mere humans can achieve that depth of agape love, and we do not want to create guilt for our mortal weaknesses and failures. But in you, God, we see a model for the kind of parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or friend we strive to be for those young in years or new in their faith journey.

Whether we realize it or not all of us are mentors and teachers for young people who observe and imitate our words and actions. Help us, Heavenly Father, to be worthy models of integrity, courage, faith, and love in all we do. May all of us so live that our fathers and children will be proud of us, but most importantly that you one day will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

We pray as we try to live, in the name of Jesus, who taught us how to live, to love, and to pray using these words: Our Father, who art in heaven . . .

Northwest United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio

Lent: Fourth Sunday Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Gratitude, Lenten devotion, prayer

O God of eternal love, we are here again needing your amazing grace.  We’re half way through our Lenten journey, and to be honest some of us have lost our way.  The distractions of life keep pulling us off track.  There are taxes to do, gardens to prepare, and our houses, offices, and even our lives need a good spring cleaning. 

Spring break isn’t long enough, and quite frankly we often come back from vacations more tired than when we left. Those school assignments or work deadlines are still lurking on our lap tops and in the back of our minds.  Instead of focusing on what you would have us do for others we get turned in on our own fears and doubts about the future—concerns about our own health or the well-being of our loved ones. 

Gracious Holy One, we know you have told us over and over again to put our trust in you and not in things that thieves or natural disasters can take from us.  But we still have to buy expensive food and watch our retirement accounts shrivel up.  Those fears are real, God.  And they make it hard to trust in the future. 

So we’re here seeking hope and assurance.  We need forgiveness for the times we have strayed from the narrow path that leads to salvation and for the times when we self-righteously look down our noses at others who are just as lost as we are.  Speak to us again your words of grace that tell us and show us that we can never wander so far that you can’t find us, for you are with us and your spirit is right within our hearts.

Remind us once more, O Holy One, that you are not the judgmental, angry God many of us grew up learning about, but you are the Good Shepherd, the mother hen, the eagle parents nurturing their young. You love us unconditionally forever.  There’s no fine print, no preexisting conditions in the new covenant we have with you that was signed and sealed in Jesus’ own blood on Calvary’s cross.

So with grateful hearts we the people of your kindom reaffirm our trust and offer again the prayer Christ taught us to pray …

Christmas Eve Prayer

by Steve Harsh, posted in Faith and Values, prayer

O God, as we celebrate again this holy night, remind us that Christmas is so much more than just retelling a sentimental tale. We give thanks that Christmas is a time of fellowship and fine food, a time to put aside just for a while, the things that divide us. But let us not forget how marvelous and how expensive a gift Christmas really is. Remind us that the manger of Bethlehem and the cross of Calvary are both made of the same wood; that this small child, this incarnation of your love, was not sent to be a decoration for us to display for a season, but came to show us what real love looks like on a daily basis– a love that is willing to die for us, a love that came, as the angels said, to save us from all fear and give us eternal peace.

Remind us again tonight, God, why we tell the Christmas story– because of who Jesus became, what he taught, how he lived, and how he died but lives eternally. This cold winter night, we bring our gifts of thanks because though we are undeserving we are once more offered the greatest gift ever given—a free gift, with no strings attached—a helpless peasant baby who slipped quietly and unexpectedly into a world full of oppression and fear. He came to be a gift and to show us that we are also gifts, all of us, no matter how insignificant we feel we are all members of your human family.

Remind us that to be human is a gift, because it means that God’s own heart beats within us. Inspire us with stories of angels and shepherds to show us that we can all love as Jesus loves. That is truly a most precious gift. But Jesus showed us that it is also a costly gift – it will cost us our very lives, all that we are, to be the kind of gift Jesus is.

We praise you O God for the one true Christmas gift. Give us meek hearts to receive him, trusting hearts of children who dare to believe, and through the magic of Christmas let us allow ourselves to be transformed into gifts – gifts to one another of peace and love and joy to be shared with all the world.

In the name of the Christ child who is our Lord and Savior forever we pray. Amen.

[Written for Northwest UMC, Columbus, OH]

Rejoicing when God says No

by Steve Harsh, posted in Aging to Sageing, Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values, Faith Development

Pity party alert. I am having a medical procedure next week that requires me to be off some of the meds I take for arthritic pain, and therefore I am experiencing more discomfort that usual. The result is that I’ve been a bigger pain than usual for my poor wife. I don’t like myself when I’m in this kind of state, and the fact that I know I’m making everything worse when I dwell on my problems doesn’t help.

As a student of communication I know very well how powerful words are, especially the self-talk kind. I went to the thesaurus to find another word for “pain” while writing the paragraph above so I didn’t keep repeating myself. The first three choices my Microsoft Word thesaurus gave me were a real revelation: “discomfort, agony and aching.” What a difference a simple word choice makes in describing the same sensation. To be in “agony” is certainly a whole different ball game than having “discomfort” or “aching.” The good news is I get to choose how I want to label what I’m feeling.

Mornings are the worst for my discomfort; so when I went back to my Lenten devotion of reading Psalm 90 sure enough there was relevant wisdom awaiting me: “Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” (vs. 13-14).
Pity-party Steve gravitates to the phrase “How long, O Lord? Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning…” Yes, Lord, especially in the morning. But the compassion I’m asking for isn’t what I really need or what God provides. I want to feel like a 30 year-old again. I want the pain, ache, discomfort, agony to all go away with a Holy abracadabra!

But the Psalmist has a much more realistic and deeper request that we need at every age and stage of life. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” The pain meds modern science offers are never more than a temporary fix, and God knows we’re seeing an opioid epidemic that can lead to horrific addiction and death. There’s a reason we don’t say “In Big Pharma We Trust.” God’s solution to pain is as simple and illusive as unconditional steadfast love, and it doesn’t just last for a morning. It enables us to rejoice all our days because unconditional love doesn’t say “I love you if you are faithful and brave or if you don’t complain.” Steadfast love says, “I love you, period.”

These are not new thoughts for me or in Scripture, but they are words we need to really hear on a regular basis. I wrote about these same issues for me two years ago (May 2015) in a post entitled “Encouraged and Inspired: Signs of Resurrection Living” where I reflected on St. Paul’s request in II Corinthians for God to remove his “thorn in the flesh.” God’s answer to Paul not once but three times was “no” because like me Paul was praying for the wrong thing. He was asking for physical healing, but the answer Paul got was God’s reply that “My grace is sufficient for you.” (II Cor. 12:9). God’s grace is another way of talking about God’s steadfast love.

The words from the Psalm and from Paul are similar because they are trustworthy and true. Even though they were written in totally different circumstances about very different kinds of suffering some 600 years apart, the truth is the same then and now and forever. It is the truth we all need to hear early and often because God’s steadfast, unconditional love and grace are the only things that can truly sustain us and even empower us to rejoice in difficult times.

Thanks be to God.

Advent IV, Unextinguishable Love

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith Development

advent-waiting-img_1492 The decorations are up, the stockings are hung with care, and children are bursting with anticipation. The nativity scene is set in its special place, but the manger is still empty. The nursery is stocked by Babies R Us, but the guest of honor has not yet arrived. Like expectant parents we can’t wait to cuddle the tiny new life in our arms. We are so close we can feel the baby kicking in the womb, and we are filled with a rich mixture of joy and anxiety. As we wait, let’s remember how different Jesus’ arrival was from birth today, and yet how similar. Parenting is a universal gift of love. In a birthing suite or a stable, to hear that first cry melts our hearts with instant love. Birth is worth every second of the long wait. And so today we light the 4th Advent candle, a light no darkness can extinguish, the candle of Love.

Prayer:
O God, our heavenly parent, we are so close we can see the lights of Bethlehem reflecting on icy roads. Forgive us when we get distracted from the destination of our Advent journey. With trees and houses and malls ablaze with Christmas decorations, it’s easy to get lost on our way to the manger. Disturbing news from inhumane places like Aleppo threaten to extinguish our hope for humankind. Winter storms cancel much needed Sabbath worship services. Remind us again O God that even in the shortest, darkest of days the light of the world awaits us in Bethlehem’s modest manger, and that light is constant and unfailing. It is the light of love; a love that makes room for a mother in labor in a strange place; a love that hears angels sing of peace on earth and joy to the world. As the lights from on the Advent wreath grow brighter, help us welcome the gift of love into our hearts; so we can be midwives in a dark and weary world, helping give birth to the miracle of love. In the name of the one who is Love in human form we pray. Amen.