Love in the everyday

We had a great retreat over the weekend. A chance for students, faculty and their families to get to know each other better. The weekend ran at a good pace, with plenty of time to hang around and chat. It was wonderful to see how many young children there were. On the Friday night the room was full of 3-6 year olds playing a frenetic game of 'chasies' !

One of the highlights of the retreat was two excellent talks on Galatians 5 by C.S. Tang. He avoided the temptation of trying to be scholarly and simply laid out the teaching of the passage vividly and applied it quite tellingly. As he talked about love he had a quote from Luther about the fact that love is lived out in the everyday. I asked CS for it - and here it is.

To serve one another means "performing unimportant works such as the following: teaching the erring; comforting the afflicted; encouraging the weak; helping the neighbour in whatever way we can; bearing with his rude manners and impoliteness; putting up with annoyances, labors, and the ingratitude and contempt of men in both church and state; obeying the magistrates; treating one's parents with respect; being patient in the home with a cranky wife and an unmanageable family, and the like". (From Lectures on Galatians, 1535, LW 27:56). That is vintage Luther: earthy, to the point and worth pondering.