Loving People

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I look at the picture of my father and know this is true. He was a special man who cared deeply about people. His memory lives on fondly within the hearts of those he loved.

There are those people so gentle and loving in their ways that a moment with them brings peace and hope to the most pained of hearts. When they walk through a life it is suddenly transformed. They are, in the truest sense of the word, "lovers" — people who have realized they are really nothing of themselves; their goodness is but a gift from God because they held out their hands, empty, to receive it. Appreciating the magnitude of the gift, they then went out in great joy to share it. All knowledge, wisdom, talent, possessions acquired by them are only means of communicating God's love to others. They are simply people who have felt the love of God and realize it is the essence of all life...past, present and future.

That knowledge is like fire within them and they cannot rest. They are impelled by it, for they can remember their life before being nothing more than the sun rising and setting on days without meaning. Times of crying out in agony only when the pain required a still further surrendering of hope...until the reality of God became an absurdity. Yes, the `lover' was once the `unloved' who, through the caring of another, found God.

We are bound together in this — the lovers and the unloved. For the reality of God, the power of Incarnation, rests within those hearts that have come to fire. And if just one of those hearts be lost, God will surely weep, for then too will be lost many hearts of the still unloved.

Lord, teach us how to grow out of selfishness and into love. Show us the way, give us the courage to enter into the lives of the unloved. Enable us to die, like you, on the cross of a higher purpose, the life of another.