Establishing Our Hearts in Love

My father's middle name was Gardener and he lived up to his name. When I was a boy I loved watching him in the garden. I was fascinated by the whole process of growing vegetables and impatient to see results, so inspected daily for signs of growth. He showed me how to grow the biggest and sweetest marrows by threading wool through the stem and leading it into a jar of sugar and water. The plant fed on this syrupy goodness - I think they call it capillary attraction - and the marrow swelled up until it was ripe for picking. I would proudly carry it inside to my mother who stuffed it and baked it the oven.

God's love for us is bottomless, limitless, it can't be any greater, but we need to open ourselves to Him to receive. Not a mental assent to a spiritual truth, but an experience of His love deep within our hearts. As we spend regular time feeding on His love, our heart swells and we become increasingly aware of God's Presence. When the going gets tough we then have a well of heavenly resource that we can draw upon and have the confidence that Father will see us through.

I have found out to my cost that it is imperative to give priority to this abiding rather than leave it until trouble comes.

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19 New International Version