Lectio
“No one believes God a friend who was not first loved by God.”
— Teresa of Avila, Vida 8:5, Obras Completas, 88
Meditatio
We cry out to God in our suffering and rejoice in Him in our joy because He first cried out to us, and He first rejoiced in us (1 John 4:19). Our prayers are the return message. They are our response to His love, which has been drawing us to Him through our joy and our pain, in spite of our joy and our pain, and even before our joy and our pain.
God loved us before we ever loved Him. He formed us from love and for love. And His only wish is that we accept His love and return it to Him and to our neighbors.
Even when we did not know or feel it, God was rearing us like children (Hosea 11:1–4), reaching out with His loving hand to guide and protect us, and to set us on the path that leads to Him. This, though we ignored Him, denied Him, and rejected Him. But He never stopped loving us. He never stopped reaching out to and for us. In God’s infinite love, God is powerless to be anything less than infinitely in love with us — as James Finley puts it — which is why, just as we suffer in our absence from God, God suffers in our absence from Him.
When we turn away from God — when we refuse the Love that is drawing us home — God’s heart breaks for us. God weeps for us. God is crucified by us. But even the crucified God forgives the repentant and welcomes us into paradise.
When we return to God, there are no conditions, no reproach, no accounting for our absence. There is only the welcome that was always waiting — the embrace that has been reaching toward us since before we turned away.
He does not ask where we were, what we want, or how we are going to make things right. Rather, He runs to us, celebrates our return, and rejoices in our reunion — the reunion He has been calling us to all along, and which has always been His desire, now and forever.
Oratio
love searched for me
before I knew I was lost
she called to me
while I wandered
in the wilderness
the only home I’ve known
her song
a faint echo
heard in the distance
come home my love
come home
beckoning me
like a flickering light
guiding my way
out of the all too familiar darkness
but love was not far away
nor hidden
she opened my eyes
to the truth
that she was always with me
that the wilderness was my desire
and that the darkness was of my own making
Love searched for me
in my heart
where love resided all along
Contemplatio
Where in your life have you been wandering in a wilderness of your own making — and what might it mean to let Love open your eyes to the truth that she has been with you all along?
Related Scripture
“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
— Romans 5:8
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Already Loved: How God’s Infinite Love Calls Us to Love in Return, which explores God’s prevenient love as the ground of our own capacity to love God and neighbor in return.
Written by Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
grapplingwithdivinity.com
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