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       Falling 
        in Love with God 
        Have you been able to let yourself fall back in love with God? Have 
        you dared to give your heart to him? There's a sort of frightening 
        self-abandonment involved in such a willingness to fall in love 
        with God, to take him out of the safety of the Sunday morning slot 
        and to put him instead right in the very center of our being where 
        he becomes, as it were, the reference point for our every choice 
        and action. I have a very visceral way of understanding this risk. 
        Perhaps you can identify with it. It comes from when I was a kid 
        and I used to love to climb up to the very top branches of the pecan 
        tree in our back yard. And I learned there about the stability I 
        could get by touching or holding on to even the smallest of branches, 
        not because it could support my weight, but because it was a reference 
        point for my sense of balance. That small branch wasn't holding me 
        up, but I knew that without it I would lose my equilibrium and risk 
        falling from the height of my climb. And so it is for us if we lose 
        that reference point in our lives, which is Christ, who invites us 
        to keep our bearings, to keep our balance, by reaching out to touch 
        him and by trusting his stability in order to steady our trembling 
        souls. 
        --from the sermon "The Gift and the Burden of Love" 
        by the Rev. Margaret B. Gunness 
       
        Read the sermon in its entirety. 
       
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