The Love That Surrounds Us

“Love surrounds us, looking for the smallest crack by which it may enter in.” —George MacDonald

Our neighbors' sidewalk boasts a peculiar sight: an ice plant growing out of a slab of concrete. Seeds from a plant next door have washed down the sidewalk and taken root in a tiny crack in an otherwise solid slab.

When I pass that way I think of the story Jesus told about the farmer that went out to sow seed in his field. Some fell on a hard, impenetrable pathway and could find no place to grow. 

Some folks’ hearts get to be that way: Trampled and hardened by wrongdoing—others’ or their own—there’s no place for God’s love to take root and grow.

But the hardest heart will be broken—“the rains fall, the floods come, the winds blow.” A child dies, a relationship unravels, a career founders, an incurable illness is uncovered, old age descends and the last illusions of life are torn away. Then tiny fissures begin to appear and the Love that has surrounded us all through our lives may find a place to enter in. That’s when we may be closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than ever before.

David Roper