The other day I sat to meditate on these words, “Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) and became overwhelmed… Grateful… not everyone gets to feel this. I don’t always, or even often, get to feel it… but there it was… growing… bringing tears to my eyes, bathing me in comfort, joy, gratitude, peace, love, from the depths of my spirit to the fullness of my heart.
I was at once receiving and accepting this Love while also generating and radiating it back to God and to the whole world from my entire being (and beyond).
What made me open in that very moment I do not know? It lasted only minutes but I learned (or was reminded) so much about love. I felt the quality of grace unmerited, undeserved, unearned both as heir and source. I am so deeply flawed but I felt that love as perfectly, completely, deeply and without question of whether I deserved it. And for those moments I felt this also for all people, without judgment, without expectation, without comparison.
I can’t make myself feel it now, but I can remember that it exists, not just within me but in everything and everyone… I can try to express love without the expectation of reward (now or in another life), without the concealed intention that if I love God enough, or in the right way, God will favor me, reward me, make my problems go away…I can let the faint light of that love that remains be expressed without anticipation of being loved back and with no fear of what others might think…like the warmth of the sun of course it only wants to shine.
-Reverend Lisa McMillan
Let it shine! I love that comparison to the sun, because the sun shines, that's what it does, even if there are clouds in the way. That seems to me to be the nature of God. God loves because that's what God does. Thanks for the beautiful message.
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