I took this photo last evening at Altamount, Millstreet, Co.Cork. This beautiful pink flower is simply growing in the front lawn as a wild flower. It’s a part of the lawn that is not getting mown each week and it would be a shame to cut this beautiful flower. I don’t know its name but the flowers are very small and also eye-catching too.

(Due to the summer break the website is currently running on a daily photo update and an updated Thought For The Week. All the other bits and pieces will return as normal at the start of September)

Thought For The Week

‘God’s love doesn’t discriminate, it simply embraces everything. Like the sun it doesn’t shine selectively, shedding its warmth on vegetables because they are good and refusing its warmth on the weeds because they are bad. It just shines on everything and irrespective of its condition, receives its warmth.’ ~Ronald Rolheiser

Words like incredible, brilliant, exciting and amazing could be used to describe Cork’s fabulous win in the hurling against Limerick last Sunday. After the excitement calmed during the week, we now look forward to the All Ireland hurling final next weekend. It’s going to be a special weekend.

The same words incredible, brilliant, exciting and amazing can also be said of God’s love for each of us. To say that God’s love is for everyone and that it simply embraces everything and everyone is almost too good to be true.  The most obvious question from this is: why bother to be good if God loves everyone the same and equally?

To make the effort to be good means that love is always the priority. We aren’t loved because we are good, but we become good because we experience love. The more love we experience the better it is for us, our family, our community and the world we live in. We do our best to grow in love, to nurture it, to share it, to celebrate it and to allow it to shape us into the wonderful person God created us to be.

Sure enough, we sometimes stumble and sometimes fall. Does this mean that we should abandon the road of love that guides us each day? Of course not! The same goes with God. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. There is a big difference between the two. So today should be a day to begin to believe in you, to believe in God’s love for you and to believe that now is the time to start again, even after a stumble or fall in your life.

Thought For The Week is updated each Monday