The Daily Pearl
On Love
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”
Jeremiah 31 : 3
A Prayer for This Morning
Father, before I loved you, you had already loved me for longer than time. Let this be the fact I build the day upon. Draw me again with lovingkindness, and make me a safe harbour for the people you have given me to love.
Affirmation
I am loved with an everlasting love; I did not earn it, and I cannot outrun it.
The Reflection
I have loved thee with an everlasting love is spoken, in Jeremiah, to a people in exile: displaced, disgraced, and reasonably certain the relationship was over. It is the least conditional sentence in the prophets. Everlasting reaches in both directions; the love predates the failure and outlasts it, which places it permanently beyond the reach of performance.
Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Not driven: drawn, the patient verb, the way tides draw, the way a pearl is drawn out of years of dark water into open light. Everything else this house speaks of, worth and rest and courage and all the rest of the strand, is threaded on this single filament. She is loved. She was loved first. The rest is response.
In Her Company
St Gianna Beretta Molla
A physician, wife and mother who gave her life for her unborn daughter, having written that love is the most beautiful sentiment the Lord has put into souls.
Gianna Beretta Molla (1922 to 1962) was an Italian paediatrician, wife and mother who saw her medical practice as a mission. Facing a dangerous pregnancy, she insisted that her child's life come before her own, and she died a week after her daughter was safely born. She was canonised in 2004, with her husband and children present.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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