Cultivating soil builds energy and health in the dirt itself so that everything connected with it might flourish. Cultivating love can work the same way in God’s church. Cultivating love is the work of developing and enriching ourselves, our congregations, and our communities, so that love might flourish among us. Cultivating love is adopting those practices that draw us more deeply into God’s story and into our relationship with each other. Cultivating love means being rooted in Christ, being grounded in grace, and being connected to our communities.
Questions for Reflection:
- In what ways have you seen or felt God cultivating love? For you?
- What might a year-long focus on cultivating love mean for you? For your congregation? For your community?
- How might we cultivate love through the ways we show up with and for our neighbors?
- What are two to three ways that you can tangibly share God’s love and cultivate love for others?
Suggested Hymns and Songs:
Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love – ELW 708 & WOV 765
Jesus, Loves Me This I Know – ELW 595
Love Consecrates the Humblest Act – ELW 360 & LBW 122
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling – ELW 631 & LBW 315
Love Has Brought Us Here Together – ACS 1040
Prayer of the Day
Loving God, in you, with you, and through you, we have come to know what love is. Yet, we do not comprehend the fullness of your love and we fail to show what we do understand of your love to our neighbors. Continue to love us and grow in us all the dimensions of your love so that we might sow your love wherever we go, with whomever we encounter through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Reading
Ephesians 3:14-21
Other Theme Considerations and Potential Connections:
- “Cultivating Love” begins as the theme of the 2024 Nebraska Synod Assembly. What might this theme mean for us as the whole Nebraska Synod in the year ahead?
- The June calendar also includes: LGBTQIA+ Pride Month; the Commemoration of the Emmanuel Nine; Juneteenth; and World Refugee Day. How might these connect to the focus of Cultivating Love?
