Journal of Sacred Work

[Note: The following meditation was written by Cathy Self, Sr. Vice President, Baptist Healing Trust]

Love
comforteth like sunshine after rain…                        
  – William Shakespeare “Venus and Adonis”

  This
piece of art recently captured my attention and my heart. It is titled
“Sunshine After Rain” and was painted by the American artist William Langston
Lathrop (1859-1938). Letting myself fall deeply into its texture, I found
recall and a relishing of the sweetness and delight in the experience of
sunshine after rain.
   As much as I love a rainy day, there is something magical about the
environment when the sun emerges after rain – the air still heavy with
moisture…droplets of water glistening on tree leaves and covering my old,
weathered deck chair…the smell of the damp earth… the sweetest of a gift in the
faint whisper of a rainbow lingering with its promise. Yet, what we are privileged to do every day holds
an even sweeter promise…

   I think
Shakespeare was right – Love sweetly comforts, as of sunshine after rain. Those
who look to us are most often in the midst of a stormy season of life, and it
is in us that they so desperately
need to see and feel the comforting touch of Love.
   In an earlier
meditation in the Journal, Erie Chapman asked if the face of healthcare needs
to change.    What is healthcare’s face if not our own? I’ve had to revisit on
several occasions the ‘face’ that others see in me, especially when I am tired,
worried, or distracted. What others see in my face is not always the face of
Love, which I so long to show. I forget too often, however, that it is not my
effort but the grace of Love that I need only let shine through. Perhaps this
is the challenge you, too, “face” daily.
   As an
opportunity to find rest, I leave you with words that I found to be an
invitation, a welcome respite reminding me that even when I falter, Love never
fails…. 

Love feels no burden,
thinks nothing of trouble,
attempts what is above its strength,
pleads no excuse of impossibility…
It is therefore able to undertake all things,
and it completes many things,
and warrants them to take effect,
where he who does not love would faint and lie down.
Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not.
Though weary, it is not tired;
though pressed, it is not straitened;
though alarmed, it is not confounded…


– Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)