Lectio
“Love is available to all of God’s children because it’s commanded them.”
— William Meninger, The Cloud of Unknowing Pt. 3: Who is Called to Contemplative Prayer?
Meditatio
It has been said that God will not give us more than we can handle, but this is only partly true. In fact, God often gives us exactly more than we can handle. He gives us tests we cannot pass, trials we cannot overcome, laws we cannot follow, and crosses we cannot possibly bear — of our own power and without his help. This is the hinge on which everything turns. If we want to do God’s will, we need more power than we can muster on our own, and we have to have God’s help.
We were not created to be self-sufficient. We were not created to be like God without God. We were created for relationship. We were created for union. We were created in the image and likeness of God, and God is love, which means God is relationship, because the very nature of love is that it is directed outward toward the beloved — the nature of love is that it is poured out for the other. In this way, just as we are made whole in and through our relationship with God, God is made whole in and through his relationship with us — not because God lacks anything, but because love by its nature moves toward completion in the beloved — and Love, by its very nature, moves toward completion in us.
The longing we feel for God, therefore, is a reflection of God’s longing for us. Our pain is his pain. Our cries are his cries. Our forsakenness is his forsakenness. The agony, emptiness, and torment we feel when we turn away from God’s love is felt first by God in his powerlessness to stop loving us.
But God does not suffer in a vacuum. He suffers because he loves us — even when we turn away from him, deny and reject him, or betray and crucify him. And yet he never turns away from us. Even from the cross — especially from the cross — he loves us, forgives us, and draws us back to himself.
And this is the mystery at the heart of the Crucifixion: that it is exactly too much for us to face alone. Even Jesus, God’s own Son who was with God and who was God (John 1:1), asked for help to face and fulfill his divine purpose. He asked his disciples to keep watch with him and to pray with him, and he asked the Father to take away his cup of suffering, if it be his will.
And then Jesus said yes anyway, showing us how faith is lived out — that only through our faithful yes, even when the path forward feels like too much to bear, we are united with the Father through Christ, and given the power of the Holy Spirit to do together what we could not do alone.
Oratio
Lord, I’m helpless
powerless
to do your will
without you
unable to live
unable to love
unable to bear it all
on my own
Christ, be my hope
be my strength
be my yes
my redemption
through the cross
I am carried home
to the Father
never alone
Contemplatio
When the path forward feels like too much to bear, can you trust that you are never alone — that Christ is inviting you to the Father through him?
Related Scripture
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The First Word Was Love: A Prayer of Consent to the Love That Is All in All, which explores the same Love that commands and sustains us — tracing how divine Love is not only what we are called toward but the very ground that makes our yes possible.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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