confession: Love

Call to Confession:
Whether we have the gift of beautiful speech, or the gift of understanding and knowledge, or the gift of faith or of generosity or of any other good thing—if we do not love, even our most precious talents are as nothing. And if we believe Love to be a only feeling or a thought, still we miss the Truth. Before God, with the people of God, let us confess the ways we have fallen short of God’s Love. Let us pray.

One:    Love is patient and kind
All:     and we are in a bit of a hurry…
One:    Love does not insist on its own way
All:     but really, God, my way is clearly best.
One:    Love is not envious or resentful
All:     and yet we hoard it as if there might not be enough.
One:    Love is all these verbs—rejoices, bears, believes, hopes, endures—
All:     but we are so tempted to confine it where we can understand and control, domesticating love into romance or intellect.
One:    God is Love, and those who abide in Love abide in God.

silence

One:    When we have not lived in your love, when we have insisted and hurt and believed ourselves to know fully even as we know only in part,
All:     Forgive us, O God.
One:    When we have thought, spoken, and acted in childish ways even as you call us to grow in your grace,
All:     Forgive us, O God.
One:    Draw us again into your embrace, that we may abide in faith, hope, and love.
All:     Amen.

Assurance of Forgiveness:
Friends, hear this good news: Though now we see dimly, as through a tinted window, Love is clearing the way for us to know God just as fully as God knows us. We will live the good news: in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Amen.