Love Never Ends...on my "to read" list

Last year was a blur of busyness. Hindsight, it feels like a lot was going on but nothing was getting done. This is very frustrating and disconcerting. One of the things that I regret having to let go of last year was reading. I love to read. I like that it takes me to places and times that I can not visit. I like to meet, in a virtual respect, people that are intriguing and I love that it is almost impossible to finish a book and not be better for reading it. Sure I have read books that I wonder why I wasted my time with it, but that is why I learned many years ago that it is important to pick words out of books that you like or don't know the meaning of and add them to your repertoire so that at the very least I can say I learned a new word.

I have a few books that I got last year and either never got to finish or worst yet, have yet to crack the spine of it. I have promised myself that I would finish these before I seek another book. But darn the luck, a book has found me and I absolutely can not wait to hold it in my hands (yes I prefer the tactile pleasures of holding a book rather than reading from an electronic reading device).

The book I am speaking of is...."The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" edited by Isabel Best. Here is a snippet from an excerpt that I recently read.

There will be just one thing in the end, and that is the love that was in our thoughts, worries, wishes, and hopes. Everything else ends and passes away - everything we did not think, and long for, out of love. All thoughts, all knowledge, all talk that has not love comes to an end - only love never ends.

Bonhoeffer goes on to answer why everything else meets an end and yet love continues....

Because only in love does a person let go of himself or herself and give up his or her will, for the others person's benefit. Because love alone comes not from my own self but from another self, from God's self.

I must admit that I have been meaning to read Bonhoeffer's biography for a few years now and have never gotten around to it, however, this excerpt has awakened a new desire to not only read his biography but this newly released collection of sermons. Good thing my birthday is not to far off and I have about a month to finish my current book so that I might sink my teeth into this one.