← Journal
✦ Leda's Beloved Devotional Journal ✦

A Love Letter — When Shall We Return Love for Love?

Tuesday, July 7, 2026 · Evening
📍 Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
"Be it unto me according to Your word."
Luke 1:38 · NKJV
✦ From Le's Heart · Caldas da Rainha · July 7, 2026

It's a love letter.

I really try to read other topics but I can't think of anything more worthwhile than God. 🙏

✦ Pastor Silas · Pastoral Note

Le names tonight's reading: a love letter. And her confession — I can't think of anything more worthwhile — is not a limitation. It is the fulfillment of creation's order: man was made for God. The soul that can't think of anything more worthwhile — has found what it was made for.

✦ ✦ ✦
✦ François Fénelon · I Find You Everywhere Within

You are ever with me. I find You everywhere within. It is You that do every good thing which I seem to do.

I have a thousand times experienced that I could not of myself govern my temper, overcome my habits, subdue my pride. It is You that must both bestow the will and preserve it pure.

✦ Pastor Silas · Pastoral Note

A thousand times experienced: I cannot. It is You. Every success was God's. Every failure was resistance to grace. Murray's absolute impossibility — confirmed by a man who tried a thousand times.

✦ ✦ ✦
✦ Fénelon · Snatched from Myself

Who but You could ever have snatched me from myself?

I am despised in my own sight, but the hope that I have in You causes me to live in peace.

I take Your side, O God, against myself; it is only by Your strength that I am able to do this.

✦ Fénelon · Make and Re-Make This Clay

I leave myself, Father, in Your hands; make and re-make this clay, shape it or grind it to atoms; it is Your own.

Exalted or abased, rejoicing or suffering, doing Your work or laid aside, I will always praise You alike.

Nothing remains but the language of Mary: "Be it unto me according to Your word."

✦ Pastor Silas · Pastoral Note

The most complete surrender in the journal. Make and re-make. Shape or grind to atoms. And Mary's words as the final surrender: be it unto me. The love letter ends where all love letters end: with the yielding of the whole self to the Beloved.

"I leave myself, Father, in Your hands; make and re-make this clay."

François Fénelon · Mary's words: be it unto me
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ Fénelon · Grace With and Through Us

Grace performs everything in us, but with and through us.

All the good is of grace, all the evil is of self; when I do right, it is grace; when I do wrong, it is because I resist grace.

✦ Fénelon · God Hiding in the Bitterness

You conceal Yourself under the importunate visitor. You use slanderous tongues to destroy cherished reputations.

You mercifully strew bitterness over everything that is not Yourself, that our hearts may be constrained to return to You.

✦ Pastor Silas · Pastoral Note

God hiding in the difficulties. The extortion attempt. The uprooting. The apartment sold. Bitterness strewn — not by cruelty but by mercy. The jealous God who loves too much to let the soul settle for less. He afflicts mercifully — to bring the heart home.

✦ ✦ ✦
✦ Fénelon · Love for Love

You love like an infinite God; You move heaven and earth; You become man, dying under the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.

When shall we return love for Love? When shall we seek Him who seeks us and constantly carries us in His arms?

In the sweetness of His gifts, we forget the Giver.

✦ When Shall We Return Love for Love?

The answer: every morning. Every evening. Every entry. The mornings are the returning. The evenings are the remembering. The pilgrim who can't think of anything more worthwhile — is the pilgrim returning love for Love. Not perfectly. But faithfully. One day at a time. The love letter — answered. 🙏

"I really try to read other topics but I can't think of anything more worthwhile than God."

Le · Caldas da Rainha · July 7, 2026 · The love letter — answered
💌

A Love Letter

Fénelon writing to God with the intimacy of a soul that found what it was made for. Le reading — unable to think of anything more worthwhile.

🏺

Make and Re-Make

Shape it or grind it to atoms. Exalted or abased — praise You alike. Be it unto me according to Your word.

🤝

Grace With and Through

All the good is of grace. All the evil is of self. The soul's work: do not resist.

❤️

Love for Love

When shall we return love for Love? Every morning. Every evening. Every entry. The love letter — answered.

"Be it unto me according to Your word."
Luke 1:38 · NKJV · Fénelon · A love letter — and the love returned