The Vicar's Wife

Until Lent began this year, I’d not written on here for a long time. But I had written some things elsewhere. I’m struggling to remember what most of them were, but one of the things was a study guide for the Church of England Evangelical Council on a book they published called Glorify God in Your Body. As I prepared the guide I was particularly struck by this passage from Glorify God in Your Body, talking about how Tim and Kathy Keller describe friendship in their book The Meaning of Marriage.

What does it mean, then, to love one another as friends? The Kellers identify three
characteristics that mark out friendship: constancy, transparency, and common passion.

Friends are always there for each other, they are open and honest, and they share a
common enthusiasm for something or somethings (in the words of C S Lewis ‘even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice’). In the Bible we find that all three of these characteristics apply to the relationships of love that should exist within the life of God’s people.

As I thought about this, I reflected on how these three characteristics are not only a  wonderful description of love between friends, and love between a husband and wife, but they also describe how we should love one another in local churches.

If we show constancy, we’ll have a ministry of turning up – we’ll be there on Sundays and at other things: hall cleaning parties, coffee mornings, prayer meetings and Beetle drives. We’ll be there for each other, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping those who weep.

If we show transparency, we’ll be honest with one another, vulnerable, open. We’ll not shut down conversations by telling one another that things are fine when they aren’t. We’ll not ask people how they are without really wanting to find out.

If we have a common passion, surely it will be a passion for Jesus, for holding out the word of life to our neighbours. It will be a passion that lights up our parish with the joy of knowing sins forgiven and the promise of eternal life.

So let’s work on those relationships of love in our churches. I’m so thankful for the love of many dear brothers and sisters in our congregation here, shown in many different ways, but we still have much work to do. I’m praying for more of the constancy, transparency and common passion which deepens the love of God in our lives and demonstrates it to our needy world.

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