Mark 10:21. Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have & give to the poor, & 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 Hebrew, it is 'chesed' (gutteral 'k' sound to start) which in the New Testament in essence is the very same as the Greek 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, who 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!

Or — Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing. I wonder if the rich young ruler could comprehend such wisdom . . .

O’Donahue says that: Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is: what did I really see this day?  And pearls like – As you enter into the dream that brought you here, and awaken its beauty in you, then beauty will gradually awaken all around you.

In the same spirit, and with much depth of understanding, he wrote this wonderful prayer – a blessing for someone’s birthday:

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day the blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth, 

Illuminating all the faces and voices that would arrive, to invite your soul to grow.

Praised be your father and mother who loved you before you were, 

And trusted to call you here with no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be.

Blessed be those who have crossed your life with dark gifts of hurt and loss

That have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you, blessed be those who looked for you and found you, 

Their kind hands urgent to open a window in the grey wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice, your health, eyes to behold the world, 

Thoughts to countenance the unknown, memory to harvest vanished days, 

Your heart to feel the world’s waves, 

Your breath to breathe the nourishment of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing-day of your birth, may you open the gift of solitude

In order to receive your soul, enter the generosity of silence

To hear your hidden heart, know the serenity of stillness.

To be enfolded anew by the miracle of your being.