Reflection
A loving, present, compassionate, forgiving God seems to be someone we accept intellectually but who eludes us in reality. We seem to have been comfortable with a judgmental and punitive God up above who distributed favors and was placated by sacrifices. Yet, Jesus constantly preached and gave witness to God’s ever abiding love. It is worth probing what it is in ourselves that blocks us from the freedom of living in in the security of that love. Why do we find it so difficult to realize that there is a God who could really love us?
Prayer
Open my understanding to the joy of Your abiding, loving presence.
Action
I will try to recognize the events in my life that are signs of God’s love for me.
Suggested Reading
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, `Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, `Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to make merry.
Luke 15: 1 – 3, 11 – 32
Give thanks to the God of heaven for God’s love endures forever.
Psalm 136:26
As God has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love .
John 15:9.
We are all called upon to bear witness to and to proclaim the message that ‘God is love,’ that God is not distant from us or insensible to our human affairs. He is close to us, He is always by our side, He walks with us to share our joys and our pains, our hope and our strife.
Pope Francis
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.
Thomas Merton
If you have never known the power of God’s love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it – I mean really asked, expecting an answer.
Frederick Buechner
Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.
C.S. Lewis
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver