Weekly Inspiration (5/16/25)

“In friendship we discover the fully formed personhood of our friend. We encounter all that makes them themselves, unique and irreplaceable—the things about them we like and the things we don’t. We come to recognize that they are their own world, and Christ dwells in all of it, not just our own points of commonality. Christ dwells in all that makes them them—and we come to love them for it.”

Br. Lain Wilson
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

No one will snatch them

by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.
            No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
                        —John 10.28

Because, dear one,
my hand is my heart,
sinew-bound you are,
flesh of my flesh,
not just in my hand but of it,
inseparable.
In your farthest removes
you are still held,
in your wildest temptation,
your awfullest sin,
your worst failure, you are mine.
In your worst sickness,
your deepest depression,
your toughest seizure,
your foulest addiction,
you belong to me,
and they have no grasp of you.
On the street, in handcuffs,
on the witness stand, or denied the stand,
in the torture prison,
detained, deported, disappeared—
you are here in my hand,
heart-held, heard, indivisible
from my deepest love.
In the face of hell itself
I've got you.