We pray today to be renewed in the love that never faileth.

"Love never faileth." (1 Cor 13:8 KJV)

We pray today to be renewed in the love that never faileth. We would be renewed in confidence that the long littleness of our life serves no small purpose, that the words and deeds of our days have meaning beyond themselves, that the highest purposes of life may be served even in the humblest of acts. God, help us to realize that the world of the spirit and the world of the body do not exist alongside one another but within one another; that acts of the spirit are the deeds of our daily lives; that justice is created when we act justly; that mercy is made manifest in merciful work. Help us to live our lives with a deeper awareness of the meaning and significance of what we say and do; help us to see that even the smallest act done in the spirit of love helps to move the world in the direction of the Kingdom.

"To know justice and live justly is to become just; to know love and so to live is to become loving." Everything avails. Like footsteps on the sands of time all that we attempt and all that we do makes its impression. We do not live wholly to ourselves nor do we die wholly to ourselves. We are each part of a wholeness, part of a unity moving through time and through space, a wholeness to which we belong, bound together by the mystery of love. We feel its power sometimes with profound personal emotion. At other times we know its reality in the radiant peace of a winter sunset: the hint and reminder of the love that moves the sun and the other stars -- the love in whose fullness we know that even in our deepest loneliness we are never alone -- the love that never faileth. Amen.