The struggle to love

We are still in Easter time in our Church seasons. The season of Easter attempts to bring together these times and dimensions, pushing us to know the substance of love within us to see into the reality of the Divine beyond. Observing Easter stretches the soul into a special expanded consciousness of love.
Sometimes this can happen when you pray. Beyond all our words and asking for things, our images and desires, the substance of prayer is love. Contemplation is the infusion of love. When Solomon asked for discernment in his youthful prayer at the high place at Gibeon, he was given, not more brains, but a listening heart.
A woman who served in the military during World War II (and is now a nun) was once at a conference with two men, a German and an American. As they wiped dishes one evening after dinner they exchanged stories about the war. The American told of the horror he felt as a young pilot during a particularly savage bombing of a city in Germany. He had orders to bomb the hospital, which he would know by the huge red cross painted on the roof. The second man -- after regaining his composure -- revealed that his wife had been giving birth to their baby in that very hospital when it was being bombed. My friend tiptoed out of the room as the two men fell into each other’s arms weeping.
What the author of Revelation was trying to do was to imagine being in heaven, at the end of the world, where we might fall weeping upon one another, waves of reconciliation breaking upon us as we adjust ourselves to this new dimension of pure love.
"And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more. . ."
Meanwhile, living the commandment to love one another is mostly a tough task -- love misdirected by anguishing mistakes, bad decisions or impulses, in the mess of our human life. And yet, even in the mess, signs of the kingdom of heaven emerge in the struggle to love.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2123

NOW!

Now, do you want to know a secret? Making new; that what's going on in the world; that's what's happening. The Holy City is not future per­fect, it's present tense. (Check out the Greek verbs in the text!) Now the Holy City is descending. Now God is making things new. Right now God is wiping tears and easing pain and overcoming the power of death in the world.

Now! There's nothing otherworldly about the vision; it's happening Now in the midst of our worn, torn, broken world. And with the eyes of faith, you can see it happening.”

David Buttrick

We antici.......pate

We anticipate

what is not yet

and practice now

your future

we say and sing

that all you have made

your creation

is good

laboriously

so very slowly

we work out your promise

in hope and fear

and strive to build

a city of peace

a new creation

where you will

be our light,

our all.

Give us strength, O God,

To persevere

And bring us to

A happy end

Huub Oosterhuis

Leunig - Love one another

Love God

waves of reconciliation

"What the author of Revelation was trying to do was to imagine being in heaven, at the end of the world, where we might fall weeping upon one another, waves of reconciliation breaking upon us as we adjust ourselves to this new dimension of pure love.
"And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more. . ."
          Meanwhile, living the commandment to love one another is mostly a tough task -- love misdirected by anguishing mistakes, bad decisions or impulses, in the mess of our human life. And yet, even in the mess, signs of the kingdom of heaven emerge in the struggle to love."
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2123