Photo was taken last evening looking down into the valley from Togher, Mushera, near Millstreet, Co.Cork (Irl)
The first significant rain of summer 2018 fell yesterday after 2 months of drought. The rain was soaked up eagerly by parched fields and gardens. You could feel the energy and freshness in the air last evening when this photo was taken. Even though the clouds were low and quite overcast, there was a sense of celebration all around.
Thought on Friday – August – 27/07/2018
Thought For The Week
God’s love doesn’t discriminate, it simply embraces everything. Like the sun it doesn’t shine selectively, shedding its warmth on vegetables because they are good and refusing its warmth on the weeds because they are bad. It just shines on everything and irrespective of its condition, receives its warmth.’ – Ronald Ronheiser
This summer we have endless sunshine and the image of God’s love like the sun is a good one. Words like incredible, brilliant or amazing could be used to describe God’s love. To say that God loves us when we are good and that God loves us when we are bad is quite incredible and maybe a bit confusing too. It throws up some key questions.
The first big one is why bother to be good if God loves everyone the same and equally? To bother to be good means that love is always the priority. We aren’t loved because we are good, but we become good because we experience love. The more love we experience the better it is for us, our family, our community and the world we live in. The presence of evil and wrong is always an absence of love. The challenge today is to nurture love especially when there is tension, negativity, darkness and sometimes hatred.
It is little wonder that the words of the prayer by St Francis, resonate deeply with us: Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy
We do our best to grow in love, to nurture it, to share it, to celebrate it and to allow it shape us into the wonderful person God created us to be. Sure enough, we sometimes stumble and sometimes fall spectacularly. Does this mean that we should abandon the road of love that guides us each day? Of course not! The same goes with God. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. There is a big difference between the two. So today should be a day to begin to believe in you, to believe in God’s love for you and to believe that now is the time to start again, even after a stumble or fall in your life.
