Daily Verse
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Christlike Love in the Home
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Saturday's Reflection
Colossians 3:14 — And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
This week we looked at Christlike love where it is hardest — in the home, with the people who see us as we actually are. Robertson McQuilkin walked away from a career at its peak because he had made a promise forty-two years earlier and intended to keep it. Ruth crossed a border into poverty and foreignness because she would not leave a grieving woman alone. Susanna Wesley pulled her apron over her head to pray in the middle of chaos, and then gave each of her children their own evening with her — Monday through Saturday, week after week, year after year. And Paul's description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 reminded us that this kind of love is not a feeling but a practice — something built one patient, kind, unselfish choice at a time.
Paul's word to the Colossians is that love is the bond that holds everything else together. Not the most spectacular gift, not the most visible ministry, not the most theologically sophisticated doctrine — love. Above all these things. The home where love is genuinely practiced — where people are patient with one another, quick to forgive, slow to provoke, willing to sacrifice — is a home held together by the strongest bond there is.
On this Sabbath, the invitation is to bring the home honestly before God. Not to feel guilty about where we have fallen short — but to ask for what we cannot produce ourselves. The love that suffers long, that keeps promises when they are costly,
that stays when it would be easier to go, that prays faithfully for people who cannot pray for themselves — that love is a gift of the Spirit. We cannot manufacture it. But we can ask for it. And we can choose, one day at a time, to practice it.
"Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life — lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control. The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil." (Ellen G. White, Counsels to Parents, Teachers and Students, p. 107)
Prayer: Father, bind our homes together with love — real love, costly love, Christlike love. Where we have been harsh, soften us. Where we have been distant, draw us near. May the people who live with us experience something of how You love us. Amen.