Week Two: Day 2 – Wherever Love Is

So how can we come to know the love of God in our lives and in the lives of those around us? I start with the understanding that God is Himself love. God is love. And in a sense all love is God’s love and all love has its source, its ultimate source, in the heart of God. Like that very old hymn reminds us, “Wherever love is, God himself is there.” So we see God’s love all around us in the lives of those that we know, in their compassion, in their generosity, in their giving, in their acts of love and kindness, the way that they care for other people. It is all God’s love even though it is coming through those individuals. Even more immediately, we can come to know God’s love within ourselves because we too, like the people we admire and appreciate, we, too, are instruments of God’s love. We are Christ’s hands in the world, as it were. So God’s love is something that’s alive and present and active in and through us and so recognizing that in our giving, in our generosity, in our compassion, in our loving kindness and care for others, that that’s God living and active and working through us and through our lives.

Some of us have gotten very good at making confessions, you know, making a list of our failings and our sins. But sometimes I wonder if we are not very good at recognizing the good that we do and maybe we need some kind of sacrament, a confession of good deeds. A confession of the ways in which Christ’s love has been active and manifested in our own lives, in and through us. And so I think this is important to consider in a Rule of Life because a Rule of Life, of course, will include some kind of reasonable, healthy self-care plan, some ways to make sure that we are healthy in ourselves. But it also will include some opportunities for serving others and for some plan for giving to others so that Christ’s love can be manifest in and through us, and in an intentional way. I think it is a very important part of making our lives livelier still.

– Br. Mark Brown

Question to Journal
What makes you most aware of God’s love?