Saturday, September 6, 2025

Dear God,

How do you make love grow?  How do we find ourselves loving our neighbor near and far away?  What makes our heart swell with love?

When each of my daughters told me they were pregnant, I fell in love with that tiny seed in their wombs.  By the time those babies were born, I loved them with a deep, abiding love.  I knew it and I could feel it.  

But I have found that love grows within me when I hear of mass shootings, starving children and wars on other continents.  How can I suddenly love strangers?  It is because you have put your own loving self in the human heart and soul.  From the beginning you wanted us to love one another.  When disasters come, you want us to love people suffering with loss and grief.  You want us to feel their pain so we can respond to their need whatever that may be.  You made us to be lovers, not haters.

This kind of love is more than ordinary.  It is an elastic love, one that stretches to include more.  When wildfires destroy acres of forests, we feel the pain of land and wildlife.  This is only possible because your love is within us helping us to love as you love.

Thank you

for placing

your love

within us,

O God.

Thank you

for growing 

love inside.

Thank you

for making

my neighbor

my beloved too.

Yours, Andrea