Tuesday, First Week of Lent

 TUESDAY, FIRST WEEK OF LENT

Loving God: Our First Duty

O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together. Psalm 34:3

The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a lover who wants to be loved. The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God not only says: “You are my Beloved.” God also asks: “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.” That is the spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything. Being born and growing up, leaving  home and finding a career, being praised and being rejected, walking and resting, praying and playing, becoming ill and being healed – yes, living and dying – they all become expressions of that divine question: “Do you love me?” and at every point of the journey there is the choice to say, “Yes” and the choice to say “No.”

Lord, I confess that I have not tried as hard as I can to know and love you. But I will try this Lent to revive the First Commandment in my life by attendance at church, private devotional moments and reaching out to others.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, Renewed FOR LIFE

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