The True Voice

I am your God. I have molded you with my own hands, and I love what I have made. I love you with a love that has no limits, because I love you as I am loved. Do not run away from me. Come back to me-not once, not twice, but always again. You are my child. How can you ever doubt that I will embrace you again, hold you against my breast, kiss you and let my hands run through your hair? I am your God- the God of mercy and compassion, the God of pardon and love, the God of tenderness and care. Please do not say that I have given up on you, that I cannot stand you any more, that there is no way back. It is not true. I so much want you to be with me. I know all your words. I see all your actions. And I love you because you are beautiful, made in my own image, an expression of my most intimate love. Do not judge yourself. Do not reject yourself. Let my love touch the deepest, most hidden corners of your own heart and reveal to you your own beauty, a beauty that you have lost sight of, but will become visible to you again in the light of my mercy. Come, come, let me wipe your tears, and let my mouth come close to your ear and say to you, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Nouwen, Show Me the Way

What the world needs NOW.

I wish everyone in the world could be loved the way everyone deserves to be loved.

I have been noticing the way in which I (along with everyone else) tend to overcomplicate my life and life goals, when all of it really comes down to love; loving the angry business man I walk past, loving the old lady I sit next to on the bus, loving my co-workers, loving my landlady; loving people for their intrinsic value, but also because they need it. I need it.

Why is it that the one thing everyone truly wants, is the one thing we flee from? We all want to be loved fully, but are afraid to be loved fully.

Lets just all love everyone to the brim and find ourselves loved to the brim in the process, ok?

Ready....go!

Oh, and, yeah....decblopomo fail.

"A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense"

I realize that I mention George MacDonald in just about every other blog entry, but it cannot be helped! I am currently reading The Back of the North Wind as well as his Unspoken Sermons. One common theme in his writings is that of Love and the different reactions of Love in hearts of different states of being. For instance, to the soul that has willfully invited Love to dwell within him or her, that person will experience joy and blessedness. For the person that is living in sin, Love is a thing of terror, misery and agony.

"The terror of God is but the other side of his love; it is love outside the house, that would be inside." -MacDonald, The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity

In The Back of the North Wind, the little hero Diamond hears his drunken neighbor abusing his wife and making his baby cry. Diamond, who has been to the back of the North Wind (of which the narrator reminds us rather often), wakes up and quietly creeps into his neighbor's house to comfort the baby. When the drunken neighbor eventually sobers up, he is absorbed with misery. MacDonald writes, "this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart and telling him to be good. For that Great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of the voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the soul of St. John it was perfect blessedness."

Praise God for the times when Love echoes within our hearts in tones of stabbing agony. When misery encompasses us, let us be driven to invite Love inside our house, so that His voice may echo in blessed tones.