HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 12/17/18

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

– I Corinthians 13:12-13

How we long to be known to one another.

Or do we? For many of us there persists the suspicion: if you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me. But in therapy groups and sharing groups across the land comes the astonishing discovery: to really know me is to love me. Not because I am perfect – far from it – but because in sharing my vulnerability and pain and weakness, I become understood and accepted. Like newly tilled earth, I am ready for fresh seeds, for new growth. 

The “now” and “then” in the passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth describe the clouded and imperfect knowledge and love we experience in life, a state of full enlightenment and love we will know on the other side of death.

When burdened with feelings of self-doubt and anxiety about unresolved conflict, I will try to imagine a truly forgiving world.