Daily Reading for April 27 • The Sixth Sunday of Easter
If you love me, Jesus says, you will do something and I will do something. You will do what I have set out for you to do: Love one another. Serve others humbly. Reach out to those in need. Be an agent of healing and life. And, if you love me, I will provide you with another Friend. I will not be with you in the flesh, but Someone will be with you always: the Spirit of Truth.
That’s quite a love gift.
So often we leave a token of our love for someone when we have to be away from them—a card, a stuffed animal, a piece of jewelry or a book that means something to us. I still have Taffy, the stuffed toy dog my parents gave me when I was five years old and had to stay alone in a children’s hospital—something to hug in their absence. But Jesus gives us something beyond our wildest imaginings: He gives us the very presence of God in the form of the Spirit. As a child of God and lover of Jesus, you have God’s Spirit with you, within you, and around you at all times.
You can’t see him. The world certainly is unable to see him. But you can know the Spirit is with you and in you, holding you up, giving you strength, showing you the road ahead, filling you with peace and purpose and love. The Spirit helps you do what Jesus has told you to do, to share and to serve. You aren’t on your own. You have a constant companion, a Friend to help you and guide you.
You can plumb the depths of even the simplest pronouncements of Jesus about the love relationship you share with him and still feel as though you never touch bottom. Understanding it—living it—requires a lifetime. But it all starts with your love for Jesus. And it will never end.
From Living Loved: Knowing Jesus as the Lover of Your Soul by Peter Wallace. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org