Dear Ones,
Hope you have a joyfilled day! I just went downstairs for Donuts and Al is at Men’s group but will love one when he gets home! I made some Chocolate Peanutty Bars while he is gone and this afternoon we have Bible Study.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
  We can so glibly talk about God’s love and yet we have so much to learn of love, for God is the source of all love. We see in our culture the shallowness of our own selfish love that is fickle and open to change which becomes evident in the soaring divorce rate. Yet the searching goes on to find deep love that is found only in the One who is love. 
    I am reading the book, In the School of Love, that is all about the Cistercians who go back to the year 1080 and believed that love needs to be taught. They saw love as God’s very being and the exchange between the 3 persons of the Trinity. They believed that we can only become what we are created to be by loving God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves. Quite different than our human love that is turned back on itself and needs to be reoriented and set free.
  The Holy Spirit wants to be our teacher in helping us to love God from the depths of our being and to enjoy Him and live for Him. God was from the beginning and always was. He is good, He is kind, He is mercy, and His love can’t be measured. He is all and more of what our soul longs for. Nothing else can take His place in our lives. If we don’t come to love Him, we will always feel empty. To know God, we must also come to know ourselves for we were created in His image and our worth is in Him. His desire it that we become more like Him and be united in spirit. He wants us to give Him our whole heart. If we choose to go our own way, we will miss what our heart is really longing for.
  Even if we feel like the Prodigal son that left his father and went far away, we can return to Him and know that He is waiting for us with outreached arms to receive us. Let us humbly return and let Him give us a heart of love. As David said in Psalm 23:2-3 “He offers a resting place for me in His luxurious love. His tracks take me to an oasis of peace, the quiet brook of bliss. That’s where He restores and revives my life. He opens before me pathways to God’s pleasure and leads me along in his footsteps of righteousness so that I can bring honor to His name.”
Challenge for today: Read the Word not to know more, but to know God more and His love! 
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy