Sunday 15 June 2014

Behold, I am with you always

This one phrase gives me so much comfort, Jesus says "Behold I am always with you, to the end of the age" Matthew 28:20.  Jesus is with me always, and sometimes I can feel the presence intensely, other times it eludes me.  This afternoon I felt God's loving hand on my life and it was extraordinary and pure. 
 
In Church today our Priest talked about how God is love, and God can be felt and found when we give and experience love.  1 John 4:8 says "Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love".  This gives me great encouragement because I feel called to love, to love God, love my husband and children, family and friends, love my Church, love my community and my earth.  Often this can be a very hard calling to explain to people or even comprehend myself.  It is very challenging to implement too.  I am fairly reserved, conservative, judgemental at time, I am afraid of getting hurt or feeling rejected and I am not naturally very huggy or kissy but I still feel called to love.  I am often scared of not doing it right.  I think it would have been better if I was called to be clinical and distant, but that wasn't to be .

I know without doubt I am called to love because when I do love (the patient, kind, hopeful, persistent kind of love) the feeling is exhilarating, it is when I know why I am alive, what I am here for.  I know that when I am eventually put in my final resting place the only thing that is going to matter is how well I have loved the people placed on my path to love,  everything else is merely secondary. 
 
The truth is I am not special, we have all been called to love, and it doesn't have to be extravagant or outlandish.  This afternoon the things that made me feel love, and experience God were:
There was rain in the rain gauge.







Because of the rain our small paddock of oats has germinated which is the cause of much excitement.










It fills me with love that our eldest daughter is taking a big strawberry that she has grown for 'Show n' Share' at school tomorrow and that our girls spent the afternoon up a tree.






It fills me with love that our youngest daughter loves our crazy dog!

So many simple things in every day that let me know that God is with me, and will be until the end of time.  It is this knowledge that helps get me through the more monotonous aspects of every day life, it is these direct interactions with God that help me stay hopeful when I accidentally hear the news or talk to sad people. 

I feel like the young boy in the Bible that handed Jesus his 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread to help feed the crowd of 5000 people.  Obviously what he had in the basket was not enough but once handed to Jesus and blessed by God it was more than enough.  That is what I am doing with my love.  My small amount of imperfect love is not enough to change the world, it will not undo the hurt that people feel, it will not stop wars, it will not feed all the starving people, but if I give it to Jesus and let God bless it, who knows what is possible.