Monthly Query from Ministry and Council

January 2023

Love

Query:  What does Love require of you?

Isaac Penington, (1616-1679) was one of the early members of the Religious Society of Friends in England.  He wrote about the Quaker movement and was and influential promoter and defender of it.

” Our life is love and peace, and tenderness and bearing one with another and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations against another, but prying one for another and helping one another up with a tender hand.”

 

Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant of rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoings but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.

The Friendly Persuasion, Jessamye West  (July 18 1902, February 23, 1984)  Jessamyn  was an American author of short stories and novels and most notable Friendly Persuasion which later was made into a move..  She was a Quaker from Indiana and a graduate of Whittier College.

“ I ‘am eighty years old.  All my life I’ve been trying one way or the another to do people good.  Whether that was right or not, I don’t know, but it comes over me now that I’m excused from all that. I loved Homer, but I tied to do him good.  The way I see it now, that was wrong, that was where I’s led astray.  From now on, Eliza, I don’t figure’s thing asked of me but to love my fellow men…, No Eliza, as far as I can see, there’s not another thing asked of me, from this day forward.”

 

Advice

Attend to what love requires of you during your day, as you deal with conflicts, stress, and sorrows. (Be aware and pay attention)