Reflection for June 2025
What we crave beyond all else ...
Since January, the river of my life has enjoyed exciting and memorable moments. Most rivers have long stretches of predictable and steady movement, and then there’s the turbulent, torrential, and fast-paced sections. My engagement to Kate started quietly, in a sleepy restaurant outside Bath, but the pace quickened rapidly as we tumbled into planning all a wedding involves. Sue & Dara were amongst the many who threw themselves into it and the photos testify.
My flat went up for sale & viewings and phone calls ensued. I sold last Friday! Kate joined me in going out to Portugal late March for a long-awaited reunion with school friends that I’d shared much of my childhood with in Kenya. (18 of us made it, and half of them I’d not seen since hugging them goodbye in 1991). I shared a room with my good friend ‘Choo’ (this nickname means toilet in Swahili). Everybody was easily recognisable in their humour, values and mannerism (& gait), if not always in their body.
10 days later, I’d be saying ‘I do’ to the lovely Kate and flying off to a honeymoon in Seville, where 800 yrs of Islamic rule stand enshrined (Palace of Alcazar), next to the largest gothic cathedral in the world (1402AD). And there we would find, hidden on an obscure back street, a small gathering of Christians, drawn from around the world, sharing lunch and even giving us a second ‘wedding cake’.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed the thrill of teaching youth workers the book of Romans, in the expansive beauty of Lee Abbey with Mediterranean weather! Kate’s flat has just gone on the market. We’re looking at houses in the Severn Beach, Almondsbury, Hallen, Pilning...
What a rich whirlwind of blessing! Kate and I managed to move comfortably into my 1-bed flat, and are so enjoying life together, incl. the chance to daily pray for each other’s day and those we might encounter.
For us, life has flowed fast and wonderfully these last 4 months. And perhaps it can be woven together with what Kate and I read this morning; the powerful and poetic line that Paul prayed for Christians he cared about in Ephesus when he said, ‘and to know this love which surpasses knowledge’.
Whether our lives are in the midst of fast-paced change, or meandering more predictably, what if at the very heart of our lives, or perhaps as the very foundation of them, was this prayer that we would know God’s love for us, in a way that is beyond knowing? There are different ways we might become aware of His love for us; consciously thanking Him for the endless & unexpected blessings, seeing it in the love others give us, pressing it out of Bible verses as we turn them over in our minds. However we do it, soaking in the knowledge that above all, and below all, God’s love for us is bottomless and has a way of breaking out through the hardest and the best of times, this is what every human being craves. We all want to know that another knows us, and even more, that another loves us. This is, arguably, the greatest need we have as humans made in God’s image.
And finally, is there a better gift we could give our loved ones today, than praying that they’d know God’s love for them? A love that grounds their lives, wraps around every anxious fear their minds might generate, and gives them the courage to look up and see the One who sees them.
John Mark Molyneux