Continuing the Love Story

I spent some time the last day or so thinking about the book I would love to develop from the story told here as Dan and Nancy's Journey. Is it a story about cancer? A tale of death? A diary of losing a spouse and soldiering on? An anthem to the "human spirit?" Well, NO.

It is a love story. A tale with two parts. Nancy and I did love one another. That is why she put up with me for over three decades. And she was my best friend, so there was no chance I was going to leave that room while she waited for HIM to call her home. But there is more. It is the story of HIS love for two flawed, broken and imperfect beings. Much of that love flowed to us through our family and friends as we took this deep walk through the valley of death. I like to think that the love for and through one another still splashes on to folks I meet along the road.

Love, all love is marvelous. But only HIS divine love sustains you through the challenges of growing up together, the boredom that seeps in from time to time, and the devastation of a raging disease. How to keep that love alive? I just came across Oswald Chambers' comments on on the passage in Jude where it says "keep yourselves in the love of god".

Chambers said"Begin to trace the finger of God and the love of God in the great calamities of earth, and in the calamities that have befallen you. In sweat of brain and spirit, work, agonize at times, to keep yourself in the love of God. It is our wisdom, our happiness, our security to keep ourselves in the love of God. How do I keep myself in any sphere but by using every means to abide in it? If I wish to keep in the spiritual sphere of the love of God I must use the great organ of the spiritual realm, faith. "God loves me" - say it over and over and over, heedless of your feelings that come and go. Do not live at a distance from God, live near Him, delighting yourselves in Him. Remove all barriers of selfishness and fear, and plunge into the fathomless love of God. "Keep yourselves in the love of God," not "keep on loving God." None can do that. When once you have understood the truth about your own heart's sinfulness, think not again of it, but look at the great, vast, unlimited magnificence of the love of God. Oh may we be driven, driven further and further out into the ocean fullness of the love of God only taking care that nothing entices us out again."