Embrace

It is a shame that two bodies can embrace and yet the two hearts be a chasm apart. I refrain from saying that two bodies can embrace and yet two souls cannot, since the body are soul are inextricably linked it would be blazing folly to say that two souls were not embracing even though their bodies were. However, not so much so the heart, for we all know that you can embrace someone and your heart not be in it, as if hardly there at all. People embrace all sorts of things besides other people. Some embrace trees, in an effort to love and protect ‘mother earth’, yet they would rather climb a tree and hiss at their actual mother than stand on the ground and give her warm embrace. Some embrace their pocket very tightly with their fist, so as to create a nearly impenetrable hermetic seal that not even a gnat could squeeze through, let alone a coin. However, if the coin were in the form of currency used by some Native American tribes - that is, a millstone - they would gladly embrace it literally and not just metaphorically, even if it were being tied to their neck to be cast into the sea. Some embrace life in the form of pills, therapy, gym rat bragging rights so as to stave off death; yet when it comes time to actually live life, their strength and gusto for really embracing it is zapped. But no embrace could have been so dreadfully, icy cold as the one meant to bring death to the One who was life itself… “but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”” (Luke 22:48). But thanks be to God that that same One can embrace us eternally in the warmth of love rather than rejection we deserve, and that is news good enough to warm every embrace henceforth!