TRULY KNOWING GOD IS KNOWING TRUE LOVE
I will sing of Your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
(Psalm 89:1)
Beloved of God, if like me, you are a hopeless romantic, an initial image, at the mention of the word love, would include couples smiling, interlinked fingers, and the euphoric aura of happily ever after. A lovely image it is, and yet the older I get, as life happens and my relationship with God in Christ deepens, I have come to accept that such an image, beautiful as it is, remains a pale version of love’s reality.
Let me encourage you then, not just to read the text of the Psalm, as it has been prescribed for this fourth Sunday of Advent, but to read it in its entirety…all fifty-two verses. I can guarantee, you will come to appreciate as I have, that transcending a euphoric, romantic feeling, love is knowing, at the very core of your being, that amidst everything and all things, in spite of the ugliness of selfishness, greed, and the lust for power, which threaten to overwhelm us in this beleaguered country and world, love is living within the knowledge, beautifully described by the writer of Lamentations (3:22-23) that these notwithstanding, with the dawn of each new day, God comes to us, a reminder of the fact that always and in all ways, He is Emmanuel.
Having read the psalm, you will have noted that following the verses prescribed for today, David begins, as it were, to spill his guts! He is disappointed in what he believes is God’s abandonment not only of His promises, but of him. On and on he rants until somehow, round about verse forty-nine, the word steadfast creeps into the narrative of his diatribe, making him end the psalm not with words of despair, but in an affirmation, which has hope written all over it.
I am not sure what you are experiencing at this time, but I would hazard a guess that behind the euphoria of Christmas, lurks a cloud of unknowing…what if any good thing the future holds. Allow me to share with you an excerpt from David Benner’s book Surrender To Love. He writes:
“In spite of the trivializing influence of romantic and sentimental views of love in Western cultures, love is the strongest force in the universe. Gravity may hold planets in orbit and nuclear force may hold the atom together, but only love has the power to transform persons…only love can free us from the tyrannizing effects of fear. There is nothing more important in life than learning to love and be loved. Jesus elevated love as the goal of spiritual transformation.”
Meditate on those words, my sister, my brother, and as you do, hold them tenderly before God who said of the enigmatic David, he is a man after my own heart; God, who chose a lowly maiden from the nondescript town of Nazareth, to be the bearer of the world’s Saviour. You will come to accept as did the apostle Paul, and as I am also doing, every passing day, that nothing can separate you from such love (see Romans 8:38); that when you surrender your life, body, mind and spirit to God, you will experience, as hymn writer George Matheson declared, a love that will not let you go; an ocean depth of knowing and being known, that will issue in a life that is richer and fuller. As you light this final advent candle, therefore, whether at home, church or in the quiet of your heart, do so confident of the fact, and once again, I will use words from David Benner, in saying that:
“Regardless of what you have come to believe about God based on your life experience, the truth is that when God thinks of you, love swells in His heart and a smile comes to his face.”
For Your Further Action:
During the days of Christmas and culminating in the Epiphany on January 6, I encourage you to sit quietly with God, and meditate on John 3:16 in this way:
The depth of God’s love for me was so great, He sent His only Son to die, that I may live, forever!
There is much there for you to experience in knowing and being known by God, whose very essence is love.
Let us Pray:
Good and Gracious God, let me not be afraid of emptying the little river that is my life, within the ocean depths of your love, for there, I shall not be lost, but I shall become one with You. Amen.
For further reading:
Benner, David G: Surrender To Love; Inter Varsity Press, P.O. Box1400, Downers Grove, IL. (2015)
FEAR; A poem by: Khalil Gibran
Contributed by Canon Dr Grace Jervis
