Let's Choose to love now!

Today I heard that a colleague's father died. It made me stop and think. It made me reflect that we have only so much time and how important it is that we spend that time showing love to the people who matter the most. To paraphrase the old song, "Give me my roses before I'm gone" - don't wait until it's too late. Let's choose to love now! Christmas is the season of love. It is God's declaration that He loves us, He is with us and He is for us. What better time to reflect on the past year and to renew our love relationships - with God and with each other. Take a look at the Robert Hayden poem below. It is one of my favorites. I hope it will remind you of some of the people who were there for you in life and that you will stop and take the time to say I love you soon.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?