Devotions based on Henri Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is on friendship and the importance to seek friends to whom we can relate from our center, the place where we know we are deeply loved. Friendships happen when we accept ourselves as deeply loved and then are able to love others in a non-possessive way. “Real friends find their inner correspondence where both know the love of God. Their spirit speaks to spirit and heart to heart.”  True friendships are lasting because true love is eternal. This kind of friendship is a gift from God and is stronger than death. In this sense, true friendships continue beyond the boundary of death.  When Jesus died, the disciples’ friendship with Him did not diminish but it grew because the Holy Spirit made it more intimate than before his death. .When we have loved deeply, that love can grow even after the person has died.  Every true friendship has no end for there is a communion of saints that exists among those, living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another.  Those whom we have loved deeply and have died also live on in us. 

Let us remember that the love we give and receive is a reality that will lead us closer to God as well as to those whom God has given us to love!