God's Love Shown Us Through Others

If left to myself I'd probably become a hermit. However, since I met Him, God has been dragging me not only out of my shell but out of the house into many communities. Lately I have been very aware of how blessed I am to have so many brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ to share joys and sorrows with. It is a special bond.

It doesn't hurt that our Catholic women's book club is reading The New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. It is a series of essays, several of which dwell in particular upon different aspects of community. This bit in particular is a good "sound byte" of what has really hit me lately.

When the Love of God is in me, God is able to love you through me and you are able to love God through me. If my soul were closed to that love, God's love for you and your love for God and God's love for himself in you and in me, would be denied the particular expression which it finds through me and through no other.

Because God's love is in me, it can come to you from a different and special direction that would be closed if He did not live in me, and because His love is in you, it can come to me from a quarter from which it would not otherwise come. And because it is in both of us, God has greater glory. His love is expressed in two more ways in which it would not otherwise be expressed; that is, in two more joys that could not exist without Him.