Imprisoned By Time… Freed By Eternity

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 – Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Love will always reach out toward the eternal. Love comes from that place within us where death cannot enter. Love does accept the limits of hours, days, weeks, months, years, or centuries. Love is not willing to be imprisoned by time.
(from
Seed of Hope by Henri Nouwen)

My experience of the place of death in my life was vividly made in the death of my mother. Her death, after years of suffering and sorrow, came as a cool breeze and a gentle rain in my life. Tears flowed — yes many tears — and yet with all my twelve years of life behind me I could also smile and feel both a peace and a presence that was unmistakably a gift from my mother. She took away some of the darkness of death and led me into a deeper understanding of the connectedness of all things, living and dead. For just over a year, I was constantly aware of her presence in my life, gently yet insistently nudging me on a certain path. As that first year anniversary passed I knew without a doubt that I had not only not lost my mother, but that I had become even closer to her and that in death she had more influence in my life than when she was alive and filled with sickness and suffering. "In and through the Spirit of Christ, she indeed is becoming a part of my being." (Henri Nouwen)

Eternity is born in time, and every time someone dies whom we have loved dearly, eternity can break into our mortal existence a little bit more.

(Nouwen)

Prayer: We thank you, our Eternal God, that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. As they watch over our lives, let us, we pray, run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Amen.

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