Beloved Junior Apprentice,

Greetings once again. I trust this letter finds you in good stead, and that you are faithfully scaling every height that this missional journey presents before you. Such adventures in our lives are not always entirely pleasant, but we must learn to be at peace with ourselves and with the Master.

I believe you have been reminded unceasingly, my friend, that the vows you have taken in preparation for this journey have only one end in mind: being missional. And your mission is simply to love the world into the Kingdom of the Master. But you also need to understand what the love of our Master is like, for there is much more to know about his love than meets the eye.

Our Master has a strange capacity to love, which (even after my years of having known him) still intrigues me beyond all captivating powers of the present order of things. You see, he loves in a most dispassionate posture. It is most difficult to crystalise my understanding regarding the state of his disinterest, for I myself have yet to attain the fullness of this virtue. But in saying that our Master loves dispassionately, I do not mean that he has no passion for his people or that he does not love his work. Rather, I mean that he has a capacity to love in such an unselfish way.

When our Master loves others, he loves them for their own sake, and not for that which he may desire from them. He desires the wellbeing of these objects of his love from a truly unselfish interest that he has in them. His dispassionate love is most apparent when it comes to his willingness to seek the good of others even at his own expense.

And yet the amazing paradox is such that his own interest is best served when he loves dispassionately! He wills the good of his people not for the sake of his own good, but simply because he seeks the highest good. Hence, the way that the Master promotes his own interest is to require (of himself and of others) a love that seeks the good of the object loved. This means that to seek to love simply for the promotion of his own interest itself defies his own interest in the highest good. You must find this paradox as baffling as I do, but such is the way of our beloved Master. Worry not, my young friend, for you have many years to learn the missional ways of the Master. Even I stumbled across this discovery almost by accident.

But I need you to know this fact about our Master because when he requires his subjects to love him supremely, he only imposes the same law upon them that he does upon himself. And this knowledge, I am certain, will shed greater light on your understanding pertaining to your missional journey. Until then, my precious friend and companion in the journey, keep loving and living.

Yours most affectionately,
Senior Apprentice