i am discovering something i already knew. God longs to be loved by me. i think i spend, most people spend, so much time wanting to be loved. its what we are geared toward (especially many women)-- the pursuit of a love that would last us a lifetime. for all my early feminist inclinations and all my pop psychological understanding of relationships and all my "lessons learned" in the dating experience, i still long for a love, that idyllic love, who would stand by my side, would fight for me, would long for me, would be with me through everything, would love me in a way that would keep me going.
but if its true, if God longs to be loved by me in the way i long to be loved by whoever i end up with, how much deeper are his longings for me than mine are for an earthly love? how much longer, how much wider, how much deeper? i cant seem to get my head around this-- God, in whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together -- wants ME to love HIM? why? does he need us the way we sometimes seem to need others? is his heart tugged at when we walk away, ignore, dismiss, set him aside? i guess so, if our faith is based on relationship-- that supernatural, mysterious "relationship" with him. if his people, when faithful, are his loving bride, then when unfaithful, are harlots-- then he must love us with some unfathomable love, bigger than any scorned lover or any happy husband here in this life.
and i dont understand that.
i think that God is allowing a connection between what my head had known, what my heart has been hinting at and what my soul longs to truly understand and experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
"its what we are geared toward (especially many women)"
guess i'm a woman. kristen it was wonderful to see you on Sunday. happy thanksgiving. thank you for writing it is important to communicate.
To say, "God longs to be loved by me" is radically arrogant and assumes a major theological error. To say that God longs for anything in the same way we long for things assumes that He lacks. God lacks nothing. We lack things because we are derived, dependent. You long for love because you lack it (and marriage wont fix this); you are incomplete, and it is good to recognize our incompleteness before God. But don't assume that your feelings of incompleteness apply to the One who exists with or without your consent or approval or worship or love. As if our love was even something so pure and spotless that He should need it. What is our love afterall? And how many times has our love for God been compromised? That we love Him at all, says John "is because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Biblically speaking, it's not the other way around.
Post a Comment