Today’s Word: Power

Over time, through my reading and prayer and good, sacred conversation with friends and spiritual companions, I have come to see one very clear choice in life: We can choose power, or we can choose love. This basic choice plays itself out in nearly every aspect of our lives. We make many choices in the course of our days — big and small, important and insignificant — but they can nearly always be boiled down to this. Do we opt for power or love?

Relationships based on power do not and cannot last. Love and power may for a while hold each other in some kind of unnatural and predatory balance as one person (or country or corporation or political entity) lords it over the other — one cowering and the other threatening in ways both subtle and severe — but this tension cannot last, for the weight of the power of one on the other will eventually crush and kill. This is true in our marriages, families and friendships, and it is true at nearly every level of existence and civilization. But the truth is, we can only control the choices we make.

We can choose the way of power and see where it leads. And it can lead to some seemingly wondrous places, filled with piles of money and the power to influence others. It can lead to grand houses and positions of authority. It can lead us to unimaginable opportunities to taste the many seductions of the world. But the way of power can never last. It will eventually crumble under its own weight for it has no real foundation and no connection with the divine. For God, however powerful, is love, and love always cares first for the other and gives up any power it might have for the good of the other. And love, as we have been taught and have come to know, never fails, which is pretty powerful.

Ask yourself in silence: Which do I exercise more, love or power? Which do I rely on?