Both our scriptures this morning come from the same hand. Or perhaps we could say, they come from the same community of faith, those who followed the Apostle John in his interpretation of Jesus, and what Jesus means for us.

One clue to that common authorship is the word "abide." You find it in both passages read to us this morning, in the Gospel of John and in the First Letter of John. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, "Abide in me, as I abide in you." In the First Letter of John it says, "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Holy Spirit."

If you go back again to the Gospel of John, to the fourteenth chapter, you come to these beautiful words of Jesus, "And I will pray the Father, and he will send you another Counselor, that he may abide with yo…