Lectio
“The only thing you can do is let God be God in yielding yourself over to his transforming presence by accepting your poverty, your helplessness to surrender. And here in this Spirit-born attentiveness there is heard — so faintly it is not there — the call that makes your heart leap in awakening in you that which is wholly virginal and wholly like God.”
— James Finley, The Awakening Call
Meditatio
God does not ask our permission to be loved by Him. He simply loves us. We cannot change this fact of our existence any more than we can change God Himself.
And as powerless as we are to change God’s love, we are just as powerless to receive it by our own efforts. It is a gift freely given. It can neither be grasped nor gathered, amplified or earned. God’s love finds us. In our brokenness, in our powerlessness, and in our helplessness, God’s love finds us as we are.
It does not ask us to be holy or heroic. It does not require that we be perfect or even good. God’s love searches us out in our very poverty, giving itself to us — God giving Godself to us. God does not love us in spite of our poverty. He loves us because of our poverty without Him.
Though God does not ask our permission to be loved by Him, He does give us the freedom to consent to His love or to reject it. But even our consent is not our own doing. Even our consent is God’s love in us crying out to God’s love in God — Love calling to Love.
And so when Love finds us in our woundedness, it changes us, it transforms us, it transfigures us in ways we could not have anticipated or even desired — for how could we know what Love would do to us prior to giving ourselves over to Love?
Over time, however, as Love transforms us in love, we discover that even our woundedness that created the space within us for Love to enter was created in us by Love. The fact that we feel the pain of Love’s absence means that we know what it is to feel Love. The longing for Love is Love’s answer.
This is the faint call beneath the longing — not asking us to become something, but to awaken to what in us has never stopped being like God — perfect, untouched, and eternal.
Oratio
Wounded By Love
You wounded me
with Your Love
like a frightened deer
I heard Your footsteps
and I froze
Your sweet aroma
carried on the breeze
terrifying me
I knew not what to do
my presence overtaken
by Your Presence
as I fled
once again
I felt the sting of Your Love
piercing my side
as fast as I could
I leapt through the forest
my body warm
with fear and blood
but as I slowed
my life leaving by where You entered
I settled down in the cool brush
frightened
shivering
weeping
my heart ruptured by Your Mercy
as You approach
I try to run once more
but I have no strength
I have no will to flee
I surrender to Your Grace
as You lie with me
to comfort me
to ease my fears
and soothe my pain
my wound an opening
now filled with love
as I breathe my last breath
I feel our distance close
Your Presence becomes me
Your Love becomes me
it is finished
and I flee from You no more
Contemplatio
The ache you carry is not proof of Love’s absence — it is proof you have already known Love enough to miss it. Let that longing rest, unanswered by anything but Presence itself. Remain here a while longer, withholding nothing, and let Him have His way with you.
Related Scripture
“You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.”
— Song of Solomon 4:9 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Not Perfect, Not Okay, But Loved: On God’s Unconditional Love and the Gift We Cannot Earn, which explores how God’s love searches us out and meets us fully in our poverty, long before we can offer Him anything in return.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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