“Your love is better than wine . . . My beloved is mine and I am His.” Song of Solomon

“In every person lies a zone of solitude that no human intimacy can fill: and there God encounters us.”  Brother Roger of Taize

Are you in love with God?

I remember once a person who was in the process of divorce saying “I love my husband, but I’m not IN love with him.”  I scoffed at the time at what I considered to be a way of justifying their course of action.  I wish I would’ve inquired further into what they meant. 

I wonder if that same sentiment could be applied to our perspective of God.  “I love God, but I’m not IN love with God.”

And why WOULD we be?  At least why would we love the God that we had been taught to believe in?  The god who seems to be more concerned with what we do—or don’t do—than who we are;  The god who fills our heads with information, as if we are cramming for a test, rather than filling our hearts with love for true transformation;  The god who takes the appearance of religious people who are more eager to gossip than they are to give mercy;  The god who seems to look with favor upon the rich and successful, and look away from the poor and needy; The god who is defined by doctrines and dogmas, and disappears at the first sign of darkness (sin) and despondency; The god who is like Santa Claus, promising to shower gifts upon us as long as we are good, but who wants nothing to do with us—and in fact even promises to punish us—for whatever we do that’s bad.  I could keep going, but you get the point. And you can add your own mistaught, misdirected, misunderstood ideas of God to this description.  But the point is this:  WHY WOULD WE LOVE THIS GOD?

If the god (and please note that I used a small g to denote that I don’t believe this to be the TRUE God) described above is the one you’ve believed in, or perhaps still believe in, I would invite you to divorce yourself from that toxic relationship, and enter into a new one.  I would invite you to discard past beliefs, rituals done merely by rote, and the spiritual waste-land of worn out religious practices, and open yourself to divine love.  I would invite you to discard most, or even all, of what you’ve come to “know” about god, in order to be KNOWN BY God.  I would invite you to sit back, sit silently, sit alone, and breathe deeply so that you can allow the Breath of God, the Holy Spirit, to fill you with Divine Love.  I would invite you to stop pursuing or trying to please the strawman god of your own or others making, and simply BE in the pleasing Presence of God.  In short, I would invite you to fall in love with God.

In order to BE in love with a person, one has to be with them—at least that is usually the case.  And if one is IN love with another person, the desire is naturally to spend time with them.  It’s not necessary to be doing something with the person.  Simply being with them is enough.  The same is true with God.  The first step of Being in Love with God, is simply BEING with God.  It means making and taking the time to be in the Presence of God.  Granted, God is everywhere, but we are unaware of this!  Too often we are so caught up in our own agendas, our own pursuits, our own busy ness, that we don’t recognize God.  We are like Martha, who is so worried about doing FOR Jesus, that she doesn’t take time to contemplate what Jesus is doing for her.  We are consumed with our own agendas and activities, sometimes religious, which become like holy hyperactivity, and distract us from that which is truly Divine.  And so, it is important, perhaps even essential, to set aside that unique time and place, as Brother Roger encourages in the above quote, to be with God on a regular basis.  Hopefully this is not a task or duty that one must fulfill, but rather a desire that results in a pleasing and loving practice.

“Speak to me, Lord, give me Your peace.

 Show me the way to go.

 I need Your love, I need Your strength,

All of my needs You know.

Be by my side, be in my heart.

Be in my every prayer.

Filling my life, filling my soul,

All of the time be there . . .

Give me Your love,

Give me Your peace.[1]

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[1] Ros Robertson, from “Celtic Daily Prayer”, p.453.