-  In John "hour" means his passion or death.

      -  This is family talk.  a group is about to lose the one who is their reason to be together.  The key to their understanding what is happening and to their future is their

          relationship to Christ and to one another.   Here, love is not a feeling but a "commandment" Craddock

      -  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  It is so simple, as plain as the nose on your face. “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”  Sometimes, the solutions are sooooo simple, right there in 

            front of you, and you can’t see them.  The purpose of life is simple. To love one another as I have loved you.  Idea from Sermon from Seattle, E. Markquart

-Martin Luther King said once that story of the church is like a great extended family that receives a tremendous bequest: they receive an inheritance of a wonderful, beautiful, spacious, luxurious home to share. There is only one stipulation. All must live in it together.

      - This commandment, though new, is based on an old commandment in Leviticus 19:18.

      - This new commandment is the hallmark of the new heaven and new earth seen by John

        (Revelation 21:1).

      - The modern precept, "Look out for number one" is trumped by Jesus' call for us to love sacrificially as he does.

       - Love and Justice go together well, but loving is not a just experience. If we expect

      -  "What Would Jesus Do?" I dislike that question because we are not Jesus. "What would God have me do at this time and in this situation?" .

          We should seek to live our lives in that same relationship with God. Seeking to be Christ-like is not the same as seeking to be Christ. Brian Stoffregen,

     -Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a good way to help people value each other's differences -- and thus appreciate and make use of those differences.   Lindy

     -Friendship should not be a means to an end. It is the end.

    - They'll Know We Are Christians   lyrics to the song.

QUOTES

      - I can do all things through him who strengthens me.  Phil. 4:13

      - Christ died that we may live.  We must die to ourselves.   

      - Love is something we are, not something we do.

      - The darkest hour is always just before dawn.

      - As Dorothy Day put it, "I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

      - Love is most powerful and most powerless

      - There is nothing more dangerous than love unless it is not loving.

      - Love has nothing to do with education, power or knowledge…love is beyond behavior.

      - If you are to love the flawed world which is all around you, you must first love your flawed

         self.

      - In the Gospel, the word love is always cross shaped.

      - The place to begin building a relationship is within self

      - That which keeps us from our neighbor, keeps us from God      

      - We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love. Jonathan Swift

ILLUSTRATIONS

-There's a story about a man who got out to his car he found a little boy from a nearby project looking with great admiration at this new vehicle. The little boy said, "Does this car belong to you?" And the man said, "Yes, in fact my brother gave it to me for Christmas. I've just gotten it." With that the little boy's eyes widened. He said, "You mean to say that somebody gave it to you? And you didn't have to pay anything for it? That it came without any strings attached?" And the man said, "That's right. My brother gave it to me as a gift." With that the little boy let out a long sigh and said, "Boy, I would really like..." And the man fully expected the boy to say, "I would like to have a brother like that, who would give me such a beautiful car," but instead the man was amazed when the little boy said, "Wow! I would like to be that kind of brother. I wish I could give that kind of car to my little brother." Chicken Soup for the Soul,

- “You don’t love me!”   How many times have your kids laid that one on you? And how many times have you, as a parent, resisted the urge to tell them how much?   Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the magic that motivates a mother, I’ll tell them:   I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you should get home.    I loved you enough to insist you buy a bike with your own money even though we could afford it.   I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep.    I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to the drugstore and confess, “I stole this.”   I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.    I loved you enough to say, “You can go to Disney World on Mother’s Day.”    I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, disgust and tears in my eyes.    I loved you enough not to make excuses for your lack of respect or your bad manners.    I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and to ask for forgiveness.    I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said.    I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.    I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your own actions at 6, 10 or 16.     I loved you enough to figure you would lie about that party being chaperoned but forgave you for it, after discovering I was right.     I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.    But most of all, I loved you enough to say “No” when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.  Erma Bombec

-J. S. Bach said, "All music should have no other end and aim than the

-

HUMOR

-One day, a little girl is sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly notices that her mother has several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast to her brunette hair. She looks at her mother and inquisitively asks, "Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?" Her mother replied "Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white." The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then asked, "Momma, how come all of grandma's hairs are white?"

-Love is made up of two vowels, two consonants and two fools.

-Following a campaign speech, a young man rushed up to Senator Everett

CHILDREN

- Have you ever built a model?    First of all, you will notice that there is a 

picture on the box of what it is supposed to look like.  It would be almost impossible to

 build a model if we didn't know what it was supposed to look like when we finished. 

 Even after you know what it is supposed to look like, you must have instructions on 

how to put it together.  There are many pieces and you need the instructions to tell 

you how they all fit together.  Finally, you need some glue.  I would hate to spend all 

of that time to put a model together and then have it to fall apart.  Those are the three 

things that are important to building a model. God has done exactly the same thing for

 us to help us to build our life into what He wants us to be.  First of all, He gave us a 

picture.  He sent His Son, Jesus, to show us how to live.  Then He gave us the Bible 

as a set of instructions on how to put all of the pieces together.  Then he gave us prayer. 

 Prayer is the glue that holds it all together.  That is what we need to build our life to be

 a model of Jesus. Charles Kirkpatrick

-A little girl  asked her mother, "How come when ever I open up a flower  it falls

apart, but when God opens it up it stays together?"  The mother didn't know how to respond, but then the little girl said, 

 "Oh, I know, when I open it up I open it up from the outside, but when God opens it up it is from the inside." 

Love is like that....from inside out. (let children pass flowers to women in congregation. Fairchild

- song 

-  another song:

   They will know we are Christians by our love (see above)

PRAYER PHRASES