Always Choose Love

Dear Sutton and Savannah, 

Time is powerful. It eliminates options, while also expanding possibilities. It creates space for new insights, while also focusing attention through deadlines. It can expose poor decisions, produce unintended consequences, and prove our limitations. It is also a great judge of love, or lack thereof. Always choose love.

-Dad

Inside Out Lectionary Letters

Year A Proper 11 - (Texts, Art, Hymns)

Readings for Sunday, July 12, 2026

Genesis 28:10-19a / Psalm 139:1-12,23-24 / Romans 8:12-25 / Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Summary of Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds to describe one aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven. Good seed is sown in a field, but an enemy secretly sows weeds among the wheat. Rather than pulling the weeds immediately, the landowner allows both to grow together until the harvest, trusting that time will reveal the difference between what bears life and what does not.

Scripture as a Mirror of the Soul

The past few weeks have brought an unexpected health crisis into my life. The kind that quietly reminds you of your mortality—and even prompts practical questions like whether your loved ones know where to find your passwords. It also reminded me of a chapel series I organized years ago called The Last Lecture Series. Each speaker was asked to imagine this was the final devotional they would ever give. As I sat with this week’s Gospel, I found myself asking the same question: If this were the last Lectionary Letter I ever wrote, what would I most want to say?

Perhaps the deepest insight of this parable is that time reveals what we cannot always see in the moment. The wheat and the weeds often look remarkably alike. The same is true within us. Some thoughts, habits, and ambitions arise from fear, woundedness, or the need to control. Others are rooted in love. We are often poor judges of which is which, especially in the middle of the growing season. But time has a remarkable way of revealing the fruit of every seed. What is born of fear eventually contracts. What is born of love expands. What is born of ego demands. What is born of grace gives life.

If these were my last words for this collection of Lectionary Letters, they would simply be this: cultivate whatever enlarges your capacity to love. Give love room to grow in every part of your inner life. Let it challenge your assumptions, soften your judgments, and shape your relationships. Time will expose what is temporary and what is eternal. Of all the seeds we scatter throughout our lifetime, only those planted in love continue bearing good fruit long after we are gone. So, always choose love.