Mark 10:21. Jesus looked at 'the rich young ruler' -- and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

I don’t think we comprehend the fact that God really loves us; that God is for us; that God wants us to be who He created us to be when He saw us and loved us before the foundation of the world – how he imagined we would emerge, develop and unfold, and come into full-humanity because of the freeing-up work of Jesus and the inner ministry of the Holy Spirit. . . . that God wants to make us very rich in the sense of having all things that make for our true, deep and lasting peace and happiness.

It’s difficult for us to give up the things we think make us rich, and see them really as poverty, compared to the riches God wants to give to us. We’re not sure it’s such a bargain, to put it, as did Jim Eliot, martyred by the Auca Indians of the Amazon jungle: “He is no fool who gives what He cannot keep to gain what He cannot lose.”

Love is the Word. In the Old Testament, it is 'chesed' which in the New Testament is, in essence, the word 'agape.' It is God’s ‘covenant love’ – shown to His People from ancient times. It is a love that is deep, faithful, lasting, transformative; that keeps its promise, that does what it says it will do. “I have loved you with an everlasting love,” the Lord says to His People – says to us.

There is an Irish man who died a few years ago, John O’Donohue, whose (who’s) poems are elsewhere on this site. He was taken too soon, in his early 50’s. His writing continues to grab my consciousness, my heart, and helps me explore the deep places of me, the deep mysteries of God, and the deep wonders of Creation; helps me savour more deeply the fact that God has so loved the world, and loves it still. He has, as many Irish writers and poets do, the ability to put words into meaning in new and arresting ways: thoughts that make me pause and go: hmmm.

Insights like these: "One of the wonderful insights of the Celtic imagination was that the landscape is alive. It would make a huge difference in one’s life when you leave your house, whether you believe you are walking out merely into ‘location,’ simply dead space, that you’re crossing only to get to where you need to go, or whether you believe that you are actually walking into a living universe. If you believe the second, then your walk becomes a different thing!"

Loved like that . . .