Lectio
“Only I do not promise to answer other questions you may raise. This one, as to loving God, I will deal with as he shall teach me, for it is sweetest, it can be handled most safely, and it will be most profitable. Keep the others for wiser men.”
— Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God
Meditatio
God is most mysterious in His generosity. His love for His children is both constant and confusing, true and troubling, faithfully present and frustratingly elusive. He is the way, the truth, and the life, but His ways are unknown to us, His truth is above us, and His life is both within us, but also beyond our grasp.
He gives us Himself and yet also gives us the freedom to reject this gift. He instills in us the desire to comprehend Him, but the inability to do so fully. He gives us the consciousness to perceive Him, as well as the mind to deny Him. He gives us hearts that long for Him, but that are also hardened by His presence.
And if we are honest, we will admit that we do not know why. We cannot explain His reasons, beyond our vain attempts to try. Like Job, we are often baffled by God’s motives and movements. We try to wrap our heads around all that has happened and is happening, but we simply cannot. And God’s response is often as frustrating as the questions themselves: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!” (Job 38:4-5).
In the end, God does not answer Job any more than He answers us. Rather, He appears to him. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5) — and it is enough. He does not give His reasons, nor the accounting Job demanded, but His presence itself, unexplained and overwhelming. Job asked why. He was given Who. And so it is for us. We ask why, but in Christ, we are given Who.
And before this Who — the God who so loves us that He gives us Himself — only one question remains worth asking. Not why He allows what He allows, but how shall we love Him back? It is the one question sweet enough to keep asking, safe enough to survive the magnificence and mystery of its object and source, and trustworthy enough to sustain us in all of our unknowing. This is the same question Job was left with in the end, unanswered in words, but resolved into silence by Love.
Oratio
Stained Windows
Your light shimmers
through the stained windows
in Your sanctuary
light refracted by sin
shadows of Your glory
cast upon the altar
our imperfect sacrifice
of time reluctantly given
attention rife with distraction
made perfect
through Your body
given over for us
and Your blood
poured out for us
though we see it now
only through stained glass
refracting Your image
the fullness of Your glory
will be revealed to us
in Paradise
Contemplatio
What if instead of trying to understand why, you focused on how to love God as God has loved you?
Related Scripture
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Mother of Spiritual Consent: Mary’s Yes and the Room It Makes for God, which explores how consent — Mary’s small yes — makes room for a grace no explanation could ever supply, the same room Job is left standing in beneath the whirlwind.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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