Dear Cathedral Family,
We are greatly blessed with an abundance of babies in the Cathedral Family. They bring us much joy and many gifts. Whenever I look into a baby’s eyes at the altar rail, I can’t help but smile. And I know that you smile, too, when you look at our babies.
Babies are among our greatest teachers. They remind us that, more than anything, each one of us wants to love and be loved. Think about holding a baby in your arms: the baby looks into your face with such searching love that you can’t resist looking back with a smile that carries your love with it.
This is how God looks at you! God is looking for your face with the same searching love and the same longing for you to look back at God’s face, see God’s love, and offer that love back to God. God pours out love on us—and wants us to pour our love out for God, too.
In the comings and goings, the ups and downs, the struggles and losses of life we can easily lose awareness of this profound connection. We can feel isolated, unloved, unhappy, unfulfilled, lonely. Like babies who lack human contact and interaction, we can cease to thrive.
The prophet Joel wrote to people who were suffering from a host of problems, who must have felt separated from God, hopeless. Joel reminded them of the foundation of their covenant relationship with God: God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” God’s steadfast love called them back, as it calls us, to “return with all our hearts.” When we do, God pours out mercy and love and abundant gifts on us.
If something has been keeping you away from feeling God’s love in the gathered Body of Christ, now is the time to return. God is looking for you.
Faithfully,
Beverly+
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