Love. Goodness. Mercy.

Remember that you don’t choose love; love chooses you. All you really can do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing then reach out and give it away.

     Kent Nerburn

A wedding and a funeral.  There’s one of each for us this week.  A beginning of one life together and the end of another.  For people we know well and certainly love.

As we spent some time yesterday sharing with each other what we planned say to those assembled at each service, there were three words that resonated most deeply during our discussion:

Love.  Goodness.  Mercy.

Life is about love.  Simply about love.  Our relationships are about love.  Simply about love.  Out of love come goodness and mercy – feelings and acts of grace, of compassion, of patience, of forgiveness, of generosity, of commitment. 

Love, when it fills us, is meant to flow abundantly out of us, touching and filling others with its life-giving, life-affirming gifts.  Love comes to us, often in unexpected ways and through unexpected people. It can surprise us and delight us beyond human measure. 

As we reflect on the life of our friend whose earthly time has passed, we see wave after wave of love’s presence flowing from her long and generous time here.  From her, goodness and mercy were shared abundantly, freely, unendingly.   We witnessed her goodness, felt her mercy, and celebrate her love.  Her life was a testament to those gifts and we are grateful for them.  Her nurturing care touched more lives than any of us can ever really know.  But it touched ours and we will always be better for that – and her. 

As we look to the life just beginning, in which two young people are starting out to create a family together, we can look to the example of our friend whose life we remember.  And as we do, we can bear witness to the binding, healing, sustaining power of love in life and its fruits of goodness and mercy that can and do serve as the foundation to a wonderful marriage.  For a marriage to thrive it needs love at its core and goodness and mercy at every turn along the way.  These are essentials.  They are what sustain us, in every relationship throughout our lives. 

And when they do, our lives are richer, deeper and more satisfying.  And when they are, the challenges, losses and disappointments that inevitably confront us have more and more of their power taken away. 

 Love.  Goodness.  Mercy.

When they choose us we are equipped for it to overflow so that we can give it away.  They are our sustenance.  At the beginning, at the end, and every moment in between.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash