Here's a simple comment that follows from yesterday's devotion. (Merton)
Go into the desert not to escape other people but in order to find them in God.
Sometimes we can be so close to other people that we do not see them as they are before God. They are simply our enemies or work mates...etc. Often time, we run away from the presence of such people. We do that simply by "going home" and secluding ourselves with ourselves. At other times we may do that by being only in the presence of those who are just as we are...in other words, secluding ourselves with ourselves. But we are invited to step away and re-view all things as we contemplate the presence of the Living God nurturing in us this love that is often beyond our comprehension. The desert magnifies the love and it magnifies what life looks like when love is absent. Our God is a God who makes it quite clear that we will find others as we long to find God. And then...in re-viewing others - even those from whom we flee - God dances with us and invites us to take hold of those from whom we thought we needed to escape.
Connection: I know I often want to be with people like me...and yet I always find that as I am urged to move beyond myself, some bit of the beauty of God's images comes into view in those from whom I have been trying to separate myself. Sin...it is an amazing power that can really destroy everything.
Lord, with your wind of life you move us to come closer to one another. It is not easy and it is not at the top of our life agenda...but you keep blowing through our lives and we find ourselves facing one another and beginning to experience the life you have promised from the beginning of time - life full of your love. Amen.
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