a Sacred Heart mini-retreat with Mary
We take it for granted. We don’t believe it. We argue against it. Yet, we cannot escape it.
God’s love.
Think for a moment of the devastation of a lack of water. Grass turns brown, flowers wilt, and crops fail. More importantly, the human body needs at least 8 or 9 cups of water daily (although the actual amount is dependent on a wide variety of factors) to perform transportation, heat regulation, filtration, and an assortment of chemical reactions. Water sustains life!
Most of us cannot imagine living without flowing clean water. Are we less aware of the sustaining, life-giving, and redeeming power of God’s love?
- What challenges your awareness of God’s love in your life today? Ask God to come personally into these areas. He longs to be with you.
- When was a time you felt loved, accepted, or offered mercy? Recognize and name this as God’s personal love for you.
Jesus illustrates water as a symbol of redemption for the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel.
Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’”
John 4:13-14
Saint Teresa of Avila further uses water as a symbol of our prayer journey with God. First, the Christian finds prayer difficult, like watering a garden a bucketful at a time. As the Christian pilgrim grows in love with God, eventually graces fall as rain or well up inside as a fountain of God’s love.
This picture from Saint Teresa of Avila, oversimplified as it is, aptly invites us to seek this spiritual journey with God, a “watering the garden” of our souls.
During wearisome and dangerous 90+ degree-days, whether literal or figurative – and you may be experiencing deep struggle to believe in love – God invites you. God invites you to skip in the rain or dance in a water fountain.
Greet with open arms His enduring, all-encompassing, ever merciful, reckless love. Celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Shout, “Yes, I believe!” Accept. Respond. Be grateful.
