From the Song of Solomon in the Bible

Set me as a seal upon your heart as a seal upon your arm

The love is as strong as death

Passion fears as the grave

It's flashes are flashes of fire a raging flame

Many waters cannot quench love

Neither can floods drown it out

The late dr. Martin Luther King

once said and I quote we

Must discover the power of love

the redemptive power of love and when we do that

We will make of this old world a new world

Belov

Love is the only way

There's power in love

Don't underestimate it

Don't even over sentimentalize it

There's power power in love

If you don't believe me

Think about a time when you first fell in love

The whole world

Seemed to center around you and your beloved. Oh

this power

power in love

Not just in its romantic forms, but any form any shape of love

There's a certain sense in

Which when you are loved and you know it

when someone cares for you, and you know it

When you love and you show it

It actually feels right

There's something right about it

And there's a reason for it

The reason has to do with the source

we were made by a power of love and

Our lives were meant and are meant to be lived in that love. That's why we were we are here

Ultimately the source of love is God Himself the source of all of our lives

There's an old medieval poem that that says where true love is found God Himself is there

The New Testament says it this way beloved

Let us love one another

Because love is of God and those who love are

Born of God and know God those who do not love do not know God why for God is love

There's power in love

There's power in love to help and heal when nothing else can

There's power in love to lift up and livering nothing else will

There's power in love

To show us the way to live

Set me as a seal on your heart a

seal on your arm

for love

It's as strong as death

But but love is not only about a young couple

Now the power of love is demonstrated by the fact that we're all here

To young people fell in love and we all showed up

But but it's not just for and about a young couple who we rejoice with it's more than that

Jesus of Nazareth on one occasion was asked by a lawyer to sum up the essence of the teachings of Moses

And-and-and-and. He went back and reached back into the Hebrew Scriptures to Deuteronomy and Leviticus

And Jesus said you shall love the Lord your God with

All your heart all your soul all your mind and all your strength

This is the first and Great Commandment and the second is like it

Love your neighbor as yourself and then in Matthews version

He added he said on these two love of God and love of neighbor hang all the law all the prophets

Everything that Moses broke everything into holy prophets everything in the scriptures

Everything that God has been trying to tell the world. Love God

Love your neighbors and while you're at it love yourself

No

someone once said that Jesus began

the most revolutionary movement in all of human history a

movement grounded in the

unconditional love of God for the world and

a movement

Mandating

people to live that love and in so doing

To change not only their lives but the very life of the world itself

I'm talking about the power

Real power

Power to change the world

If you don't believe me

Well

There were small slaves in America's Antebellum self

who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform they explained it this way they sang a

spiritual even in the midst of their captivity

It's one that says there is a balm in Gilead a healing balm something that can make things, right

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sick soul. And one of the stanzas actually explains why they said if you cannot preach like Peter and

You cannot pray like all

You just tell the love of Jesus how he died to save us all oh, that's the balm in Gilead

This way of love it is the way of life

They got it. He died to save us all he didn't die for anything. He could get out of it

Jesus did not get an honorary Doctorate for dying

He didn't he wasn't getting anything out of it. He gave up his life

He sacrificed his life for the good of others for the good of the other for the well-being of the world for us

That's what is love is not selfish and self-centred love can be sacrificial

And in so doing

becomes redemptive

In that way of unselfish

Sacrificial

redemptive love

Changes lives

And it can change this world

If you don't believe me, just just stop and think for magic think and imagine

Well

He can imagine a world where love is the way

Imagine our homes and families when love is the way imagine

Neighborhoods and

Communities where love is the way it imagined?

governments and nations

Where love is the way?

imagine business and Commerce when love is the way

imagine this tired old world when love is is the way when love is the way

Unselfish sacrificial redemptive when love is the way then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again

When love is the way?

We will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing group

In love is the way poverty will become history

When love is the way the earth?

Will be a sanctuary

And love is the way

We will lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside

to study war no more

When love is the way

There's plenty good room

Buddy good room for all of God's children

Coz when love is the way

We actually treat each other

Well

Like we're actually family

When love is the way

We know that God is the source of us all and we are brothers and sisters

Children of God

Brothers and sisters

That's a new heaven a new earth a new world a new human family

And let me tell you something old Solomon was right in the Old Testament

That's fire

They are dishing on and with this I will sit down we got to get you all married

French Jesuit ard showdown

Was arguably one of the great minds great spirits of the 20th century

Jesuit Roman Catholic priest

scientists the scholar a

mystic in

Some of his writings. He said from his scientific background as well as his theological one some of his writings

He said as others have that the discovery or invention or harnessing of fire was one of the great one of the great

scientific and technological discoveries in all of human history

Fire to a great extent made human civilization possible

Fire made it possible to cook food and and and to provide

Sanitary ways of eating which reduced the spread of disease in its time

fire made it possible to to heat warm environment and thereby made human migration around the world a

possibility even into colder climates

Fire made it possible. There is no there was no Bronze Age without fire

No, Iron Age without fire. No Industrial Revolution

without fire the advances of science and technology are greatly

Dependent on the human ability and capacity to take fire and use it for human good

Anybody get here in a car today

an automobile

Knock your heads. If you did I'm guessing I know there were some carriages

But those of us who came on cars

Fire the controlled harnessed fire made that possible

I know that the Bible says I believe Jesus walked on the water

But I have to tell you I didn't walk across the Atlantic Ocean to get here

controlled fire in that plane got me here fire makes it possible for us to text and tweet an email and Instagram and and

Facebook and socially be dysfunctional with each other

Fire makes all of that possible and and de Chardin said fire one of the greatest

discoveries in all of human history and

he then went on to say that if humanity ever harnesses the energy of fire again, if

humanity ever captures the energy of love

It will be the second time in history

That we have discovered fire

Dr. King was right

We must discover love

The redemptive power of love and when we do that

We will make of this old world a new world

My brother my sister God, love you

God bless you

And may God hold us all in those Almighty hands of love

You