Sometimes I read Thomas Merton as a part of my daily practice. Here is what he wrote on this day in 1947:

Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of Fourteenth and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were or could totally be alien to me. As if waking from a dream — a dream of my separateness…

Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could ever overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.”¹

Wherever you are reading this, I love you. You shine so bright and beautiful and I am so grateful for your light.

Grace & Peace, Pastor Cole

1. Thomas Merton, ed. Jonathan Montaldo, A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily meditations from his journal, (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 81.