The Village ILWIDIot

Walt Wiltschek

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” —John 13:34b, NRSVue

Among the various congregational newsletters I receive, I recently noticed a story shared by a member who had drifted away from that congregation at one point and later returned.

What drew him back? It wasn’t a detailed congregational outreach strategy or membership campaign or even a concerted deacon visit. The draw was much simpler: caring and love.

He shared that his parents had attended the congregation for decades, and then his mother was diagnosed with advanced cancer. As she entered the nursing home, members of the congregation made a schedule to sit with his mother each evening when family couldn’t be present.

He wrote, “I saw so much love and care being shown to my mother by these women, and could see how much she appreciated their company.”

Over the previous decade, he had been attending the church only sporadically, but “These women’s expressions of love in action drew me back.” He’s been attending regularly ever since.2

In this time in our nation and world when it often feels that love is in short supply, can it really be that simple? Just show more love and caring to those around us? Jesus often seemed to think so, even naming it in the “greatest commandment.” At the very least, it’s a place to start.

In the words of the 16th-century Carmelite mystic and writer St. John of the Cross: “Where there is no love, put love—and you will find love.”