"To be fully known and truly loved is, well,

a lot like being loved by God."

Welcome to this guide for daily spiritual reflection and renewal. Each day is an opportunity to seek deeper understanding, embrace grace, and nurture a heart of compassion. As you begin, take a moment to calm and focus yourself and prepare to encounter God in new ways.

The Second Essential: A FOCUS ON OTHERS

AN INVITATION TO DAILY WORSHIP

“Almighty God, my Father, I call upon You and request of You that Your love may be found in me, Your servant. I know not how to love as I ought: but You who are Love can reveal it unto me. Show me the way to Love. Amen.”

Disciplines of the Inner Life, Benson & Benson p.327

DAILY SCRIPTURES

A Psalm for every day.

Psalm 8

Daily Readings

Monday Matthew 18:12-14

Tuesday Luke 10:25-37

Wednesday Romans 15:1-7

Thursday I John 3:17, 18

Friday Colossians 6:2

Saturday Luke 3:10

Sunday Matthew 25:40

PERSONAL REFLECTION

“Have you experienced this concern for the sparrow’s fall? This is not just Jesus’ experience. Nor is it His inference about God’s tender love; it is the record of His experience in God. There is the tendering of the soul, toward everything in creation, from the sparrow’s fall to the slave under the lash. The hardlined face of a money-bitten financier is as deeply touching to the tendered soul as are the burned-out eyes of miners’ children, remote and unseen victims of his so-called success. There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in unquivering souls the sense and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering, and die in their death.”

From a Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly

found in Disciplines of the Inner Life, p.330.

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK

What excuse remains for me? If You stooped so low, shall I not stoop to lift another?

Therefore I beg You, Lord: kindle in me the fire of compassion, stretch out my hands in service, make my heart ache with the pains of others, that I may love them not in word only, but in truth and in deed (1 John 3:18). And when I fail, forgive me; when I grow weary, strengthen me; when I despair, remind me that Your mercy is greater than my weakness. So may I learn, little by little, to love my neighbor in You, and so to love You in my neighbor, until love is perfected in eternity. Amen.

SONG OF THE WEEK

No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus

Charles Weigle, 1932 (Public Domain)

Verse 1
I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus,
Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true.
I would tell you how He changed my life completely;
He did something that no other friend could do.

Chorus
No one ever cared for me like Jesus;
There’s no other friend so kind as He.
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me;
O how much He cared for me.

Verse 2
All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me,
All my heart was full of misery and woe;
Jesus placed His strong and loving arms around me,
And He led me in the way I ought to go.

Chorus
No one ever cared for me like Jesus;
There’s no other friend so kind as He.
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me;
O how much He cared for me.

Verse 3
Every day He comes to me with new assurance;
More and more I understand His words of love.
But I’ll never know just why He came to save me,
Till someday I see His blessed face above.

Chorus
No one ever cared for me like Jesus;
There’s no other friend so kind as He.
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me;
O how much He cared for me.

BLESSING