Since love completes all, makes all hard things soft,
and the difficult easy,
let us strive to make all our acts proceed from love.”
St. Arnold Janssen
(a small fallen maple leaf rests in the pickets / Julie Cook /2021
I absolutely love today’s opening quote…all because I like the very notion
that all things proceed from love.
As in…isn’t that what we are to be about…love?
And is that not because we, the created, were created out of Love…all because
The Creator loved us first…??
Love has been a recurring thought crossing my path as of late..
and to be quite honest, I am very grateful, thankful and most humbled.
I do not necessarily deserve the Love that continues to cross my
path…but what human does deserve such?
For were we not bought for a price?
A most costly price.
A price of unconditional Love.
I am grateful to be reminded that I am created because of love…
and that Love is not necessarily based on
human love, but more importantly it all spirals out from Spiritual love.
I’ve used this C.S. Lewis quote before…even most recently…
yet the quote keeps running across my path—
and as I don’t believe in coincidence but rather the urging of the Holy Spirit—
I feel compelled to repeat it:
Of love, C.S Lewis says it this way…
“There is no safe investment.
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one,
not even to an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements;
lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change.
It will not be broken;
it will become
unbreakable,
impenetrable,
irredeemable.
The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers
and perturbations of love is…
Hell.”
I am more than willing to be vulnerable, wrung, exposed and yes broken
if it means that love will be a viable part of my existence.
All I know is that I never want to be outside of the confines of Love…
may all I do proceed from Love…
There is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear,
because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18
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