Nouwen: Beloved for All Eternity
“God loved you before you were born. God will love you after you die. God says, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ You belong to God from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little opportunity during a few years to say, ‘I love you, too.’”—Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (Convergent Books, 2017).
Nouwen reminds us that we were loved before our birth and will be loved after we die. Love never dies. We brought love into the world, and we have the opportunity to enlarge and multiply it and give thanks for it. Yet, in some mysterious way, we also leave part of love behind and take love with us when we die.
Love is the inheritance, the legacy we leave behind in the world. Death has no power over love. If only we could keep remembering that our true vocation on this earth is to love: to let members of our family know they are loved; to let our neighbors know they are loved; to let those in our city, those in our state, those in our country, and those in our world know they are loved. This is a monumental job, but we will be given daily times and places to do this. Love may not always be on our agenda, but we will find opportunities to respond if we are open to it. David G. Benner1 calls this awareness enlightenment—seeing with the eyes of the heart. He also believes this is a gift of the Spirit that is readily available.
Because of some of my mobility issues, I must now sit in a special elevated chair. Some of the fantastic people I work with at my church made a sign for my chair to let me know that I will always have a reserved place, and that I am still loved even with my handicaps. I treasure their act of love and share it and pass their act of love on to you.
1 David G. Benner Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, 2012), pp. 144-146.
Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/