If you’ve downloaded the free YouVersion.com Bible app onto your phone, Galatians 6:10 was the verse today, and depending on your settings, the image above would have showed up on your home screen. (If you’ve not downloaded the app, or set it to show you a verse each day, try it – I think you’ll find great value in it).
I appreciated reading the verse this morning, I agreed with it in my head, but then I thought about how tired my heart feels, and got a little anxious as I drove to work about how much good I might need to give out today.
It made me think of what other people are going through that is even more painful and exhausting than my current circumstances. Grief and regret, guilt and shame, disappointments and doubts – they are part of my life, maybe yours, and most everyone else. They can undermine our resolve to do good, sap our energy, distort our vision of the future.
But pain and suffering can also connect us. If we will abide in love.
As you contemplate the grief and regrets in your life, consider these writings on love, on doing good, on abiding and being present – with those still with you in body, and those with you only in memory. They continue to be a source of wisdom and healing for me, may they be good for your soul too:
The one who truly loves never falls away from love.
He can never reach the breaking point. Yet, is it always possible to prevent a break in a relationship between two persons, especially when the other has given up? One would certainly not think so. Is not one of the two enough to break the relationship?
In a certain sense it is so. But if the one who loves is determined to not fall away from love, she can prevent the break, she can perform this miracle; for if she perseveres, a total break can never really come to be.
By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past. We transform the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility.
The one who loves that abides belongs to the future, to the eternal. From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility. But the powers of the eternal are needed for this. The one who loves must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.
The whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the one who loves- she abides.
Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, “Now there is no more conversation”?
Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!
But the one who loves abides. “I will abide,” he says. “Therefore we are still on the path of life together.” And is this not so?
What marvelous strength love has! The most powerful word that has ever been said, God’s creative word, is: “Be.” But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, “I abide.”
Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle. She only says: “I abide.” But she will conquer, conquer by her abiding.
There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by our abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to our abiding – in eternity if not sooner. If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other’s hate.
Yes, the eternal will open our eyes for love. In this way love never fails – it abides.
May these curing words of Kierkegaard impart a fresh perspective on the breaches of love in your life.
As you grieve and mourn the endings in your life, may you learn to abide in love.
We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to do good to everyone with all of the days we have left.