Lord, my desire to respond to your love fills me! How do I respond to You with the earthly response to "love others" in the fashion that would I love You? While I am so aware of and fight my own sinfulness, I do not know how to respond to those close to me who would be a cause of sinfulness in others close to me.

There is the great and wonderful gift that is the realization of John 3:16 and each of us is a specific recipient of the most tremendous gift of love that any being could share with another. We might initially be given to understand "One Lord giving Christ to all." The act of one human giving to another is what it is, but certainly the individual caring element is lost when the act  is repeated to two, three or more. For an eternal being apart from time, Christ's birth and death occurred in our time, but the Love is not in the past. Apart from time, it is eternal. It is now and always. It was directed just for me. Just for you.

Lord, I pray to love fully those around me! Receive my dispair in my own and others' sinfulness as an offering that I might present at Your Cross! May I find ways to commuicate from Your love without judgment, but in yearning to share the earnest desire that is response to the ultimate love.

Beloved in You, e1