Scripture:

‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. (John 5.13)

Reflection:

These words of Jesus tie together his core message – that love is about giving. Life is God’s gift to us and with it the power and responsibility to make it our gift of love to others. In the week of Remembrance Day we focus on gratitude for those who gave their lives in time of war, but it is also a prompt to commit ourselves to the call to love – and to love not only our friends but also the enemies of love.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, wrote this in 1937:“Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love?”His relentlessly opposition to the Nazis led to his death by hanging in a concentration camp on 9 April 1945.

David Harmsworth