This proverb is like a musical earworm. It stuck in my mind when Cathy and I were newly married. Now 43 years later it remains a reliable guide. Like all young couples starting out money matters loomed large. Then we navigated the financial challenges of launching our children in their new families. At each stage there were opportunities for discontent.

Unaware that this is Jesus’s last meal, the disciples celebrate Passover with him. In the privacy of the upper room, they listen eagerly as Jesus teaches the way to live. But, they are somber tonight. Jesus has frightened them lately with dark words of the end looming. Jesus is in danger from the crowds who have turned on him.

On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus told the apostles he had something to tell them – “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (v 34).

This must have surprised them at first. Not because it was something new but because it wasn’t.

The disciples are troubled, anxious. Turbulent emotions and poisonous politics about Jesus make them fear for his life – and their own. Now Jesus says he’s leaving them. What will they do without him? Hide? Go back to fishing and tax collecting? And all those miracles and changed lives and joy and peace? What about that?

I was travelling with a wonderful family. We were at a motel and the mom and I were making supper. Nine year old Susan was still in the pool, so the dad, Jack, strolled over to fetch her.

Other parents lined the chain-link fence around the pool, and Jack joined them.

The sugarbush beckoned every February in Quebec where I lived. About forty people dropped everything to tap 1,300 trees and hang sap buckets on the spiles. The clear, sweet water filled the sap buckets, drip by drip.

All day, we lugged pails of sap from the trees to the gathering tank behind the tractor.

History marches on, wars are fought, babies are born and others finish their tenure here on earth. Yet one unchanging truth remains, “God’s love never fails.”

God’s call to us is to give thanks to him; in every season of life – give thanks. As we enjoy the simplicity of his creation to the wonder of his deliverance in difficult times, give thanks, for his love never fails.