Lectio
“The struggle is a fierce one, and in the end struggle is of little avail against the Lord’s desire; there is no power against His power.”
— St. Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life
Meditatio
A friend of mine says that turning our will and lives over to the care of God is like giving a banana to a gorilla. We can try to take it back, but it’s going to be quite painful. Not because God is a bully, and not because we have no say in the matter — the grace that draws us to God is as much a gift of God as the freedom to reject it — but because once our soul reaches out to the God who reaches out to us, and once that connection is made, attempting to turn away, whether out of pride, fear, or defiance, will tear us apart from the inside out. God is not doing this. Our soul whose sole longing is for eternal union with eternal God, when torn away from that eternity, grieves and weeps and mourns the loss of the only thing that truly matters to it.
And in this way, to turn away from the God to whom we have dedicated our lives becomes like a living hell. We have known love, but we have abandoned it. We have known forgiveness, but we have rejected it. We have known grace, but we have denied it. And in this abandonment, rejection, and denial, we suffer as in an inextinguishable fire, an insatiable hunger, and an unquenchable thirst, not in love’s absence, but in love’s presence which we refuse to receive. Faced with eternal and unconditional love, we are tormented by our own unwillingness to be the object of that love. Again, God is not doing this to us. Our denial of undeniable love is doing this to us, for as the same sun hardens mud and melts wax, love’s light blinds those who will not see it but illumines those who will, love’s warmth hardens those who will not open to it but softens those who do, and love’s healing agonizes those who will not be healed by it but makes whole those who surrender to it.
But the Lord’s desire for our hearts and our heart’s desire for the Lord are a power against which our strength of will is no match. That is why it pains us so to pull away from him — because to pull away from God is to pull away from our own God-given godly nature, and thus to pull ourselves apart. And while love requires our consent, our heart’s greatest desire is to give that consent fully, withholding nothing. In this way, our freedom to choose between holding onto our false self — the self that exists only in selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear — and giving up the fight, abandoning ourselves to the love that will not stop loving us, is often a difficult choice, but if we are honest, we realize that the choice has already been made. All that is left for us is to cease fighting what our heart already knows is true.
Oratio
Oh how I have loved
my wounds dear Lord
more than I have loved
being loved by Love itself
my pain
my armor
shielding me from pain
or so I told myself
for within that armor
the darkness hid
the truth of death
and decay
until one day
you peeled it back
exposing my heart
to Light
at first it stung
at first it burned
at first I longed
to run
but your loving word
gave me strength
and courage
to be still
as your living Word
moved through me
turning my weakness
into strength
and now I know
I am more than wounds
loved by Love
I’m now set free
Contemplatio
What wounds have you loved more than the healing — and what would it mean to let them go?
Related Scripture
“Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” — Psalm 139:7-10 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like All Manner of Not-God: On Sabbath, Restlessness, and the Soul’s Hunger for God, which traces the same restless longing for divine union from the other side — not the pain of resistance, but the torment of a soul that reaches toward God with everything it has and still cannot close the distance on its own.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
Leave a Reply