Loving creation

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love." Dostoevsky

This is creation time in the church calender - when we celebrate harvest festivals. I was at one in the local primary school yesterday and the children brought gifts to be distributed to local old folks and had a theme of thankfulness for the good things from the earth.

But in the quotation we are called to go much further. This sort of deep spiritual respect for creation and reverence of it involves looking at the earth as a God of love must look at all that He has made. Loving involves embracing with the emotions and that can hurt. By loving we make ourselves vulnerable. So we are careful who and what we love as we try to protect ourselves. But this quotation reveals a greater truth - that though we might think that we do not have enough love to go round - if we give honestly of what we have, we will find ourselves renewed and refreshed so that we can give more that we ever knew we possesed. If we keep it to ourselves we will never find the potential vast love that is latent within us....