Tag: John 13:35

Everyone Singing from the Same Song Sheet

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2025Leave a comment

Dear Will:

A couple of weeks ago we attended the annual Holiday Wassail Concert at Chapman University. The event, showcasing the Chapman University Orchestra and various choral groups from around campus, featured an array of songs from across the spectrum: from popular, just-for-fun secular numbers like “Sleigh Ride” to sacred and sublime traditional favorites like the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.”

It’s hard to say exactly why, but the night kind of snuck up on us. Something about the spirit of the season, perhaps, made us vulnerable, and Dana and I found ourselves feeling emotional from the very first note. The choir and orchestra opened the evening with “O, Come All Ye Faithful,” the much-loved Christmas hymn. All at once the house lights came on and the conductor turned toward the audience, inviting us to sing along.

We tried. We really did. But soon we were fighting tears and choking out, “Sing, choirs of angels; sing in exaltation!” And so they sang . . . but we could not.

Perhaps our favorite song of the night was a magnificent Jewish hymn with which we were unfamiliar: “Hine Ma Tov,” with Hebrew lyrics taken from Psalm 133. The King James translation renders its message like this: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Indeed, that is the message of the season, and we were feeling it to our very core. Those choirs of angels had sung something similar on that first Christmas night: “Peace on earth, good will toward men and women everywhere!” That invitation to love and unite transcends both time and religion. It beckons each of us to stop fighting with one another, to break down barriers, to come together as brothers and sisters, fellowcitizens, children of God.

Jesus himself was a Jew, one well familiar with scripture—including, no doubt, Psalm 133. He might very well have preached that same message of unity while sitting on a hillside or standing in the synagogue. His most famous sermon, given on a mount in Galilee, included these words of counsel that still echo across the generations: “Blessed are the peacemakers. . . . Be reconciled to thy brother. . . . Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” He called on us to judge reluctantly and generously, to treat others as we would wish to be treated. He taught that love is the ultimate mark of discipleship. He commended those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, visited the sick and the imprisoned.

His empathy knew no bounds.

To some he was a great philosopher, to others a prophet among many, and to others, like us, the very Messiah himself. At this time of year especially, Dana and I celebrate his life and teachings full-throatedly (if we can choke out the words). And to his teachings, we add this prayer of our own: May the feelings we share in December pool within each of us, providing a well of living water from which we can draw throughout the year ahead.

Hine ma tov.

PW

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

By This Shall Everyone Know

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2023Leave a comment

Dear Will:

There once was a man traveling the 15-mile stretch from Jerusalem to Jericho, heading to some other destination beyond. He brought along his donkey, perhaps because it was too far to walk, perhaps because he had too much to carry. Probably both. At some point, he came upon a stranger who had been beaten and bloodied by robbers—mercilessly left for dead on the side of the road. Filled with compassion, the traveler rushed to this stranger’s aid, taking oil and wine from his personal provisions to tend to his open wounds. Who knows which item of his own clothing the traveler was forced to tear up to fashion makeshift bandages?

Having slowed the bleeding and done the best he could with whatever other injuries he found, the traveler was forced to make a decision: What should he do with the suffering stranger? Surely he couldn’t leave him at the roadside. So he did the hard thing, lifting the bloodied man onto the back of the donkey and continuing his journey on foot—perhaps even carrying whatever supplies he had removed from the back of the beast in order to make room for the injured victim.

No doubt hours behind schedule, the traveler eventually stopped for the night at a roadside inn, where he paid for the stranger’s accommodations as well. The next morning, before continuing on his journey, he left additional money with the innkeeper along with these instructions: Please nurse this man back to health, and if your expenses exceed what I have paid you, I will reimburse you when I come back through this way.

Jesus taught this parable about the kindly Samaritan and the unfortunate Jew to help us understand what love looks like. If he told it today, it might be about a Muslim and an Evangelical Christian, a Democrat and a Republican, a Palestinian and an Israeli. It is a story about compassion, about bearing the burdens of others, about inconvenience, interruption, generosity. It illustrates what we mean by “the pure love of Christ.”

Elsewhere in scripture we find other detailed descriptions of what love looks like. On another occasion, Jesus said that love is feeding the hungry, giving shelter to strangers, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, reaching out to those who are in prison. It’s treating the poor, the homeless, refugees and other victims of misfortune as you would treat Him—as if He and they were essentially the same person.

In Paul’s well-known letter to the Corinthians, he said love is patience, kindness, and celebrating the success of others. It’s humility and respect. It’s looking out for those around you and always giving them the benefit of the doubt. It’s celebrating truth. It’s tolerating, believing, and hoping, enduring whatever might come your way.

I’ve known many people who have shown me what this sort of love looks like. Through their selfless generosity of spirit, they have come to embody for me a real-life ideal of what I’m striving to become. I return to their stories again and again, perhaps as an antidote to the hate and unkindness that seems to dominate public discourse. Their examples lift and inspire me, urge me to try to be better myself.

In all of this I hear again an essential message and mandate directed to all of us who say that we are “trying to be like Jesus.” Because of love, you should be able to spot His true followers anywhere people gather: at the park, in the grocery store, at a school board meeting, at a football game—even on social media. In fact, you should not have to look very hard. Jesus gave us a simple way to spot the true believers: “By this shall all men know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

Go, and do thou likewise.

PW

Image: Ferdinand Hodler, The Good Samaritan (1875)

My Remarkable, Irresistible Pen Pals

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20195 Comments

Dear Will:

Every Monday my inbox fills with letters from around the world. They come at me from all directions: from Arizona, Utah, Georgia and the Dakotas; from Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil; from Scotland, Germany, Italy—even Russia. No wonder I love Mondays.

All of these letters are written by talented, charming, twenty-ish “kids” I have known for years. Several of them I have watched grow up since infancy. They are young men and women full of high aspirations and unlimited potential, people who will no doubt make their marks in a variety of professions and in a variety of ways. They will marry well and raise kids that you and I will consider irresistible. Their futures are brighter than most, in part because of the light they radiate.

My pen pals include many of my former students, some close family friends, nephews and nieces, and a few all-of-the-aboves. Each of them is living far from home, for the most part cut off from social media and popular culture, limited to only occasional, distant contact with family and friends. They subsist on hardly anything and don’t get paid a dime for their efforts. Willingly they have offered to go wherever and do what they can to help those around them. For as much as two years they have volunteered to put their personal lives on hold and dedicate their daily 24 to others.

It’s remarkable.

At times my far-flung friends face challenges and discouragement, no doubt with pangs of homesickness thrown in. Their letters describe weird viruses and a curious variety of problems with their toes. They learn to eat things you and I might not recognize as food. They describe bitter cold in some places and incomprehensible heat in others. As I read from week to week, I can see them wearing out their bodies and souls (and soles), lifting up the downtrodden and forgotten, embracing the lonely and unloved, bringing smiles to the sad and hope to the hopeless. In word and deed, they embody Jesus’s useful rule of thumb: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

They all are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yes. The ones you see around town with their white shirts and bicycle helmets. The ones who a time or two may have arrived unannounced on your doorstep. What you may not know is that they are also the ones who’ll help the elderly couple move their antediluvian armoire, who’ll bake goodies for the shut-in, who’ll lay sod with the over-extended family in their neglected backyard. They’re the ones who make friends on subways and sing songs in public parks. ALWAYS with a smile, I might add, especially when no one else is smiling. They are the ones who also teach anyone who will listen about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Missionaries do all of that and more.

And when another week of selflessness has come to an end, when they have exhausted themselves riding bikes up and down the hills of Orange or slogging through the muddy backroads of Paraguay, they sit down in a public library or a far-off cyber-cafe and tap out sentences like this one: “I love the mission. There’s no place I’d rather be. There’s no better job than teaching the Gospel. I’m enjoying everything here.”

No matter where “here” is. They are indeed remarkable. And irresistible. No wonder people welcome them into their homes. If you haven’t recently, you should, if only to see how they fill a room with light.

PW