Holy Love Gives Our Calling Direction
Today’s devotional
An impressive gift can be offered in a way that wounds. Knowledge may become superiority, discipline may become a measure for judging others, and generosity may become control. The abilities themselves do not answer the question of what they serve. Christian formation needs a direction capable of examining even the actions we most readily admire.
Jesus joins love of God and love of neighbor at the center of faithful life. Devotion to God gives us no reason to overlook the person nearby. Care for that person belongs within our life before God. Holy love names this life being reordered by grace, so that truth, responsibility, care, and action increasingly belong together.
First Corinthians 13 tests extraordinary speech, knowledge, and giving by love. Their scale or visibility cannot take love's place. Paul then describes patience, kindness, and a relation to truth that refuses delight in wrongdoing. These words help us recognize love's character. They should not become a scorecard for deciding which people deserve care.
Love can require a difficult truth spoken with respect. It can also require refusing a cruel comment that would win the group's approval. Calling something loving does not excuse harm, and calling something truthful does not excuse humiliation. The neighbor's actual good deserves more attention than preserving our image as either agreeable or correct.
Our calling takes shape in these ordinary relationships, often beyond anything named in a job description. Paid work, friendship, care, fidelity, and service can each become places of faithful response. Recognition does not create their value. Nor does loving well make us the owners of another person's future or the sole providers of what they need.
The grace that awakens this calling also sustains it. We can grow in love without claiming self-sufficiency or measuring anyone's worth by visible success. Even faithful love does not give us power over mortality. We entrust our lives to Christ while offering the care possible today, receiving our future from the God whose saving work exceeds what we can accomplish.
Adapted from chapter 29, “Vocation and Holy Love,” in Becoming Fully Human by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice a word, question, or invitation that asks for your attention.
Matthew 22:34-40 · WEBU
34But the Pharisees, when they heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, gathered themselves together.
35One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him.
36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
37Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38This is the first and great commandment.
39A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
40The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-7 · WEBU
1If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.
3If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.
4Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,
5doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;
6doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
Pause and respond
For reflection
What good am I serving with my abilities, and how would holy love change the way I use them?
A practice for today
Choose one person affected by your ordinary work or responsibilities. Do one specific kindness that serves their good without seeking recognition or creating an obligation to repay you.
A prayer
God of holy love, order my abilities and responsibilities toward you and my neighbors. Join truth with kindness in my speech and action. Free me from seeking importance through service. Sustain the love you awaken, and teach me to entrust its unfinished work to Christ. Amen.
Your place is remembered in this browser. No account needed.