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2024 Wesley Community Lenten Devotional

Let Love Lead the Way

View all 2024 Lenten Devotional Reflections »

Maundy Thursday

Kenneth L. Carder

Kenneth L. Carder

Community ConnectionsWTS MDiv 1965, Wesley Council Donor, Society of John Wesley 1992, Board of Governors Emeritus; Retired UMC Bishop

Love ConnectionNorma Sessions and I were married in November 2023 after a friendship forged over a ten-year period of caring for our late spouses. The love we share for one another is an expansion of the love we shared with Dale and Linda, who helped us to mature in love by receiving our care.Love LanguageService

Love’s Dance: Giving and Receiving
John 13:1–17, 31b–35

Our late spouses taught us much about love during their decade-long journey into the relentless losses of dementia. As brain diseases stripped them of self-sufficiency, resistance to being bathed became the norm. So, we understand Peter’s reluctance to have Jesus wash his feet.

Love in the form of giving care is sometimes easier than receiving care. Caring for the needs of the resistant frail can be messy, frustrating, and scary. Receiving care from another can be threatening as control is lost and self-sufficiency is relinquished.

Love is a dance. Sometimes we lead and other times we follow. Sometimes we lift and other times we are lifted. Discipleship is sharing in the Triune God’s dance of love and participating in the never-ending flow of divine love.

Our spouses, Dale and Linda, expanded our capacity to love without reciprocity by receiving our care. Washing their increasingly frail bodies, brushing their tangled hair, feeding them their favorite ice cream, even when they resisted, increased our capacity to love. By receiving our care, they fostered in us the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).

Jesus gathered with his closest friends on the night before his betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Soon he would be stripped of his freedom and control and nailed to a cross. The one who had insisted on washing the disciples’ feet in a humble act of loving service would be dependent on the care of others.

After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus left them/us with this one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” In following his example and commandment, we participate in the eternal flow of God’s steadfast love.

 

Reflection: How has your capacity to love been expanded in the giving and receiving of care?

Support Wesley Students to Answer the Call

We are grateful for our Lenten Devotional contributors whose reflections have been offered as original submissions and reflect the views of the author.

Please consider a donation for this devotional and other WTS inspired works, projects and programs.

Praying Through The Seasons With Wesley

Journey with Wesley Theological Seminary (WTS) through the seasons of the liturgical and academic year. Connect through prayer with the Wesley Community, on campus and in ministry around the world.

Please return here each season to rekindle a rhythm of prayer that unites the Wesley Family, no matter where we are.

Yearning for more?   View all devotionals here!

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