Reaching Beyond

“God’s love reaches beyond my mistakes, my fears and my sin”

I like that image, created by Elizabeth Veldboom, author of the Upper Room meditation for today. A love that reaches beyond boundaries, even those that are indeterminate, whose margins are poorly defined, perhaps invisible to the naked eye. But all things are possible for God.

I find myself here, I suspect, because a friend has died. She had a rare form of cancer, as I understand it, that didn’t respond to any treatment. Imagine what that must be like. To be diagnosed with an invader you can’t see and can’t touch and can’t defend yourself against.

God reaches beyond this with great sweeping arms that enclose more than your fears and more than your illness. I pray that Callista felt this, at least in her last days. This enfolding by God. This holding to Himself.

I wish the treatments had been able to reach beyond this cancer. I wish there had been defined boundaries so the surgeons could have said, “We got it all; you’re clear.” But this was not the news Callista got.

And now we will gather to remember her. There will be holding and hugging and tearful goodbyes. All this will reach beyond us. Because that is what love does.

It makes the perishable, imperishable. It mends the torn, binds up the wounds heals the brokenness. Refreshes, relieves, rejuvenates. This, I imagine, was the morning after Christ returned to His heavenly throne. When the incarnation was reversed, for good.

And for the good of us all.