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Sunday Mornings
Today's Devotion from The Upper Room |
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 rom The Pastor...While I know that not everyone who reads these words is currently involved in a happy and loving family relationship, I also know that for nearly everyone there is at the very least the memory of a real, pure love. It seems to me that in our experience of actual love, not just the emotional rush of adolescence, there is something deeply sacramental. There is in the experience of deep and real love a connection to something so much greater than the present. In the book entitled Gilead, Marilynne Robinson puts it this way: “I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But, I just don’t see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true.” I remember when our son Nathan was only an infant standing with him in my arms and basking in the warmth of my love for this wondrous bundle, when suddenly the thought came to me from the beyond of God, “this is only a shadow of my love for you.” In those moment of the truest of loves, we see “as in a mirror dimly” the reality of the very love God has for us. In our times of family love we touch the reality that is the love of God for us. It becomes a moment for Christ to be present and for us to be lifted to the wonder of faith. It is that outward and visible experience of the inward and spiritual grace that is the love of God which makes our family love into something sacramental. I hope and pray that during these summer months, you will take time to cherish the loves you know and have known. In the words of the great hymn, “for the joy of human love, bother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.” May your summer be filled with the loves that draw us to the love of God. Tom Greener |