“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus
“There is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction.”
C.S. Lewis
“If someone told me to write a book on morality it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine of them would be blank. On the last page I would write, I recognise only one duty and that is to love. And as far as everything else is concerned, I say no.”
Albert Camus
“Love seeks one thing. The good of the one loved.”
Thomas Merton
“The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: “love your neighbour as yourself.”
Galatians 5:14
My Prayer today is for love. We do not know the value of those things we do for others, sometimes little in our mind, but often larger than our estimation. Sometimes we do not know until we see the ‘glow’ on their face as the Philosopher Albert Camus referred to, or a thankful smile or a word here or there that signals how much it meant, or just maybe a lighter step.
My teenager just asked me if tonight we could read together in bed. ‘Its been a while since I felt ‘cosy’ he said, frustrations around school uppermost in his mind. It doesn’t take much on our part, but love given and received is enough to fuel us for what is required of us, and strengthen our resilience for a sometimes challenging world. Jesus reminds us, as does Albert Camus below, of the one duty that supersedes all others, and which alone ‘fulfills the law’ (Romans 13). May today we be people who love abundantly and without measure, there is always more to give of the love which Anne Morrow Lindbergh tells us is the only thing that can be ‘divided endlessly and still not diminish.”
Footnote: Albert Camus called himself an unbeliever but would not call himself an atheist. One of his famous quotes was, ‘I would rather live my life, as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t. Than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.’
These are drawn from daily prayers and reflections I write for my Chaplaincy colleagues.
Living Tree Poetry 