“O give thanks to the God of heaven,

for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Psalm 137:26

It’s election time again. The news cycle is full of people battling over differing ideas of what they want and what they believe America needs. These are important conversations and decisions. But headlines in today’s paper are grim. War rages. The suffering is intense. Words shout at me from the pages, rushing toward me like a flood, and I feel like I am treading water in a sea of news stories just trying to keep my head above the waves.   

Do you feel the weight of distressing news right now?

This morning at sunrise, one of my dogs pulled me right up to our Amur Maple tree. I got a close-up look at one of the limbs.  It curved out to the side. I was fascinated to discover a tiny clump of branches—babies, really—on the side of the limb. It was clear to me that these little branches were developing into another giant limb like the one I was peering at. They were barely a whisper of what they will become, but there they were in miniature growing right in front of me. I smiled grateful for a front row seat to the wonder of baby branches. 

In September, I took Tracy to the vet. She was still a joyful dog, but we saw signs of her slowing down. She moved with brittle motions instead of agility. She couldn’t see well. Her hearing was in decline. I loved her even though I knew that our time with her was short. I physically felt my heart swell when she nuzzled my hand affectionately. I felt the grip of love and sadness when I watched her curl up, asleep, in her favorite corner. 

What makes you feel your heart swell with love and sadness?

For me, writing feels a lot like planting flowers. When I am typing out words, sentences, paragraphs, I feel like I have my arms elbow deep in the “dirt” that is language. I dig and shape and work the words to transform it into something meaningful. 

Today, as I write, I am trying to find a way to convey something about the magnitude of  God’s loving-kindness, His hesed. Hesed is a word that is so packed with meaning that it’s difficult to translate. “Loving-kindness” is one attempt to help us imagine hesed’s magnitude.

But even when I start with loving-kindness, I can be sure that the actual meaning is deeper, wider, and more abundant than what I understand loving-kindness to mean. I also know the source of hesed is God whose steadfast love endures forever. 

The loving-kindness meditation is a radical prayer of love that draws us into love itself by  becoming love in us and sending love out of us to a hurting world. This is the kind of work we are invited into in the kingdom of heaven. It is active, hopeful, and necessary. 

We bring a picture of people we love, people who irritate us, people who have hurt us, whole groups of people we know into our mind. We see them. We gaze at them and imagine the way God sees them (remembering that God’s steadfast love endures forever) as we breathe in and out. 

As we gaze at them in our mind’s eye, we say over each one: May you be full of loving-kindness. May you be at ease. May you be safe from danger. May you be well in body and spirit. May the Lord bless you today.

It’s a simple prayer. All it asks of us is this: breath, imagination, humility, willingness.  We learn to let our heart swell with love, and sometimes sadness, over the people in our lives and in our world. We learn to see beauty, up close, growing in unexpected places in people. What happens inside my heart with a little dog and a tree is a reflection of what can happen with people who I find hard to understand, hard to love. 

The hidden work of this meditation brings God’s love right into the midst of the suffering. It is the way of the kingdom to love our enemies. This prayer shows us how to engage those noisy headlines with the quiet work of love.  

Would you like to join me by praying and envisioning loving-kindness towards a broken world?

 Could you help in this quiet work of prayer?