Thanks for your restoring love

Jo Black February 18, 2025 6 2

Playlists

Add to Favourites

Save for later

Listen to this daily worship

Luke 6: 17-19 (NRSVA)

17 He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. 19 And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.

If someone found their definition of love purely through the latest romance novels or blockbuster movies then they could be in trouble.

Hollywood love is painful. It wounds and twists and highlights deficits. It is often elusive or deceitful. It plays power games and is often only open to the beautifully curated, perfectly sculpted and entitled. We are drawn in by its complexities but often come away all too aware that such a love is ‘not for the likes of us’.

When we read the biblical accounts of Jesus however, his love is not played out like a survival of the fittest game or offered through a filter to the finest of society. 

This love is sufficient for a ‘great number’ (verse 17), draws in (and does not exclude) those burdened by disease, troubled by impure spirits and is available to all those who long to touch it.

This is a restorative love. A welcoming-in, embracing and seeing-past-the-damage love. A love that is open to those who have never known love. A love that gives, serves and is sufficient for vast need. A love that calms, balms and does not toy with playing hard to get. A love that openly invites, does not reject and renders the receiver whole.

And a love open to each of us today when we seek him.

Prayer:

Jesus, my heart feels bruised by this world.

It doesn’t need any more drama

And it’s rejection-weary.

Restore my heart today, Lord

Teach me to know and seek love as you define it

So I am ready and willing to share it with all those still sporting bruises

Thank you that you answer this prayer again and again.

Amen