"and Love never fails you..."

"Love will protect,
Love always hopes.
Love still believes,
even when you don't.

Love is right here.
Love is alive.
Love is the way,
the Truth, and the Life..."

Brandon Heath's "Love Never Fails" always comforts -- always gives me hope.

There are days when I have felt like such a failure. In my eyes, I've fallen short. Past mistakes that seem to impact the present, opportunities to be more loving that I let slip through my fingers, a discipline committed to, and not met -- these suggestions leave me feeling unworthy, incapable, and faltering.

If it weren’t for a number of statements of encouragement by Mary Baker Eddy, I think I would have given up on myself a long, long time ago. But in the presence of her profound humility, there is an arresting selflessness and compassion. She brings an understanding of the human condition that shatters self-doubt and hopelessness -- an unfailing love:

“The Discoverer of this Science 

could tell you of timidity, of self-distrust, friendlessness, 

toil, agonies, and victories, 

under which she needed miraculous vision to sustain her..”

and

“The practitioner may fail,
but the Science never.”

 Without Eddy's honest humility -- characterized in statements like the above -- I’m not sure that I would have been able to get out of bed some days.  Sharing that, at times, she has felt humanly inadequate to face the challenges of “just showing up” gives me hope when I, too, feel helpless.

And, humanly, we are all pretty helpless on our own.  But we are in such good company.   John reports Jesus as having once said:

“I can of mine own self,
do nothing,
but what I seeth the Father do...”

When I remember these words, I feel capable again. There is something I can do -- I can do nothing.  Yes, that's what he said, "I can of mine own self do nothing."   Nada. Not a little bit. Nothing.

So what am I capable of?  Well, I am capable of witnessing what the Father is doing moment-by-moment -- through His presence and power.  His omnipotent goodness is operating unspent, at all times, and in all places. That's what I can do. I can see what the Father is doing.  Period.

And to know that God's goodness is a law, a science that never fails -- even when the “scientist” makes mistakes, and come close to blowing up the laboratory -- is a gift of mercy so deeply kind, that it takes my breath away.  Much like the law of gravity, this science is always in operation.

And divine good is a law. It doesn't need us.  We don't have a hand in its operation, in contributing to it, or creating it. It doesn't need the permission of our thinking any more than gravity needs for us to agree with the laws of physics, in order to hold us safely on earth. As Eddy says, "the practitioner may fail, the science never."

This science is the unconditional law of Love in operation. It is a behavioral (rather than theoretical) science. It is the law of "how" Love behaves, or operates, in our lives -- and in our world. It just is, and it just does.  And this Love is so powerful, that It never fails. Surrendering to this Truth of Love's control over Its universe is as easy as trusting the buoying properties of water.

I hope you enjoy Brandon Heath’s "Love Never Fails." For me, there is a blessed reminder in its title alone. To know that even in my darkest moments, foundering on the waters of deepest despair, I can always trust Love.

As long as I am loving -- reflecting God’s nature as Love -- yes, at least in this one thing -- I am not a failure. And, to be honest, this means everything to me.

unfailingly, and with Love,
Kate