from Chapter 10

Excerpt from the book

Tools for Improving Relationships

by Beverly Caruso

Chapter Ten – That They May Be One

When those who love one another are preparing to separate, whether for a season as before a trip, or from this life, as by death, peripheral matters are set aside. Tomorrows become unimportant. Only the relationship matters. Both parties focus on what they want the other to remember always.

We hear this in recorded messages during a crisis, such as the cell phone calls between passengers on Flight 93 just before it went down in the Pennsylvania farm field on 9/11/01. “I love you.” “Tell the children their father loved them.”

So it was when Jesus was preparing to leave this earth. He wanted to imprint upon His followers the most important concepts. Jesus chose to allow His disciples to hear Him as He prayed His final earthly prayer: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you…. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you…. I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them…. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Each time I read those words, I marvel that Jesus was so concerned about our relationships.

How amazing that Jesus has given us His glory! What is that glory? It is our unity. His glory will shine through us to the world, convincing them that Jesus is the answer to their needs. What a beautiful gift God has given us in friendship – the ability to be living witnesses of His glory.

© Beverly Caruso

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