Good morning…
I took our two dogs for their annual check up, and guess what book was sitting on the bench as I waited for the vet?
The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and the Horse by Charles Mackesy. In late May, I shared a picture of a page from this book passed along by a subscriber and I offered a link to an interview with the fascinating author in our post You Are Fully Loved. But never before had I met the book myself until I noticed it sitting beside me as I waited for our vet. I picked up the hardback book, flipped through it with my fingers, and took pictures of a few of my favorite pages.
As the Spirit moves, I may trickle these delightful pages into our posts, savoring one nugget of handwritten wisdom at a time. Here is the page I feel drawn to share with you today.
There are several things hurting our collective hearts right now.
The Covid catastrophe. The anger of life turned upside down. The stressful strain of isolation, unemployment, emotional uncertainty. The grief of losing loved ones, many without a face to face goodbye. The fear of front line workers investing long grueling hours with a heightened health risk. The pros and cons of our ambivalent debate: should we risk gathering in schools or teach children online? The many painful years of racial injustice keep begging for reconciliation. People of faith are challenged to bond together beyond the church walls. The weight of the wait for what comes next is getting heavier and heavier.
“What do we do when our hearts hurt?” asked the boy. “We wrap them with friendship, shared tears and time, till they wake hopeful and happy again.”
Wrapping our heart in friendship, God heals our hurts. We share tears. We share time. We share more tears. We share more time. Gradually our hearts grow strong from inside out, waking our hope, waking our happy.
How will we react to the hurt in our hearts?
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life…use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? (Galatians 5:13-15, MSG).
…Sue…
