News and Notes

From the Pastor

A Little Love Note

From Pastor Melissa

When my daughter was in second grade, her Christmas gift to my husband and me was a hand-crafted calendar for 2025 with pictures of the season and holidays for each month of the year. She loves “directive draw” videos and utilized that tool for inspiration for our gift. For the month of February, she drew this very cute teddy bear holding a heart. I know I tend to think of hearts and love when I think of this month. But then, I sit with the word and concept of “love,” and Jesus’s teaching from the Sermon on the Mount rings through my mind: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45) That’s not the kind of love I typically associate with the month of February; however, it’s the kind of love Jesus commands. For someone to be an enemy, there is history there between you. There are feelings; not good ones, mind you. So, if we feel so strongly about someone, how might we love and pray for them?

In the Buddhist tradition, there is a meditation called “loving-kindness.” For me, I have always connected to myself and to God through movement, so embodying my faith through movement and visualization has always been an interest to me. To begin, tune into your breath and body, inviting Christ’s love and light to shine down through your head and into your heart. I have found it helpful to imagine a stage. First, I see myself on the stage and feel love and kindness toward myself. There’s a reason for this: feeling this toward oneself helps us to actually be more kind and forgiving toward others. Next, invite onto the stage someone you know that you like and feel love and kindness toward them. After that, invite someone onto the stage that you might just know as an acquaintance, maybe someone you saw at the grocery store. Extend kind thoughts to them. Lastly, invite someone you don’t like onto the stage of your mind and extend kind thoughts to them. Focus on their happiness and hope for goodness in their life. After this, I like to clear the stage and ask Christ to extend the light from my heart through my arms and legs, expanding around me. I invite you to end with a prayer to be Christ’s body in your relationships and in the world.

God makes a way out of our “no way” and our categories of those we consider “friends” and “enemies.” This February, let’s love the way Jesus commands: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. It’s the Way of Jesus that liberates us all!

Love,
Pastor Melissa

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