EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE! 

10:30 am Worship

Music Program Director opening at RUMC

Part-time position to direct 10+ person choir and plan music program for this friendly church that loves music.

Please call the office for more information. 419-666-5323

Monday, May 29, 2023

Psalm 89: 1-2

¹ Your love, O Lord, forever will I sing;
from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.
² For I am persuaded that your love is established forever;
you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens.

Forever (adv): for all future time; for always

I stand in awe of Merton, who seemed to sum up all the truths and lies of any human lifetime in just a few paragraphs.

“The measure of our identity, of our being (the two are the same), is the amount of our love for God. The more we love earthly things, reputation, importance, pleasures, ease, and success, the less we love God. Our identity is dissipated among things that have no value, and we (drown) and die in trying to live in the material things we would like to possess, or in the projects we would like to complete to objectify the work of our own wills. Then, when we come to die, we find we have squandered all the love (that is, our being) on things of nothingness, and that we are nothing, we are death. But then, most of all, in the terrifying light of pure Being and perfect Love, we see the hatefulness of nothingness, of death. But if we have loved Him, and lost ourselves in Him, we find ourselves in Him, and live forever in joy.

“But tribulation detaches us from the things of nothingness in which we spend ourselves and die. Therefore, tribulation gives us life, and we love it, not out of love for death, but out of love for life.

“My life is measured by my love of God, and that, in turn, is measured by my love for the least of His children. And that love is not an abstract benevolence; it must mean sharing their tribulation.” [A Year With Thomas Merton, 272.

Perceive the daily questions answered here. Why am I so unhappy? Why does God allow war and evil to exist? How can I exist in a world so awash in tribulation? What will it take to overcome evil? What is the point of it all? How can one escape pain and enter joy? Fragmented life, we see, becomes nothing less than death. A life of love becomes life eternal.

Only this will last forever.

Hymn of the day: The Love of God. Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUy3yaSd9b0.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler