Life given grace and character.

Life is given grace by the growth that takes place through adversity, but it is given character by how you express that growth to another. Perhaps you know what it means to feel lost. Perhaps you have experienced anxiety, worry, and concerns. Who better to express compassionate love than one who has experienced the need for compassionate love? Nonjudgmental love can only be active when it is expressed by those who have experienced it. When you experience anxiety and frustration or depression or fear, your vulnerability also allows you to welcome the compassionate expression of love offered genuinely and freely by another. What an absolutely clear glimpse of God that becomes!

Your life is filled with opportunities for these glimpses. Your life is filled with opportunities to serve and to bring dignity to another. For all such opportunities you should be grateful, for you are given the capacity to grow. You are given the warmth and light that can nurture and reflect a glimpse of God to another human being. You become, as it were, precisely that which you seek, and the circle is complete and the grace of love is continued.

You are blessed in that circle. You are blessed in your recognition of it, your valuing of it, and in your commitment to strengthen it and broaden it so that it may encircle all of humankind. This is not merely a lofty goal. It is a beacon that can serve to direct your life with meaning and purpose, joy and fulfillment, and it will bring you peace at last.

God’s peace is yours at this moment. Feel it. Remember it. Become it!