Nouwen: Beloved for All Eternity

“God loved you before you were born. God will love you after you die. God says, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ You belong to God from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little opportunity during a few years to say, ‘I love you, too.’”

—Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (Convergent Books, 2017).

Nouwen is reminding us we were loved before we were born and will be loved after we die. Love never dies. We brought love into the world, and we have the opportunity to enlarge and multiply it and give thanks for it. We also in some mysterious way leave part of love behind and take some part of love with us when we die.

Love is the inheritance, the legacy we leave behind in the world. Death has no power over love. If only we could keep remembering that our true vocation on this earth is to love: to let members of our family know they are loved; to let our neighbor know he or she is loved; to let those in our city, those in our state, those in our country, and those in our world know they are loved. This is a monumental job, but we will be given times and places every day to do this.

It may not always be on our agenda, but if we are open to it, we will find opportunities to respond. David G. Benner1 calls this awareness enlightenment—seeing with the eyes of the heart. He also believes this is a gift of the Spirit that is readily available.

1 David G. Benner inSpirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Brazos Press, 2012), pp. 144-146.

Joanna joannaseibert.com