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The Retreat Within Me
Spike Brimmer
“Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans,” according to a famous
quote that dates to the 1950s. While I was making plans to participate in and
experience the recent Retreat in Everyday Life, the retreat was changing my life from
the inside out.
As I wound my way through the retreat, I was most impacted by the time I spent
slogging along with the suffering Jesus. The immensity of His love for all mankind, and
for me personally, was manifest in the tortuous agony and ignoble death that He was
willing to undergo. Moment by moment, I came to understand more deeply that Love is
the true name of God. Love is the Alpha, the Omega and all the In Between.
Questions roiled inside me. How do I respond to this unsurpassable love? What do I
do now?
Once I stayed still long enough to give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to answer me, I
learned that I was asking the wrong question. Instead of “What do I do now?” my
immediate question needed to be, “Who am I becoming?”
The love of God, which was so manifest in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, was
changing me fundamentally. The only appropriate answer to the Love I experienced
was for me to become that Love as best as I could humanly do, and to share Love with
others.
I am transformed by Love, so to become Love to those who desperately need it. They
are friends, neighbors, strangers and enemies. They are everywhere I look, as far as I
can see.
The questions are becoming clearer. More answers will follow, If I but quiet myself and
listen for them.
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