Sometimes I look back at what happened to me over the winter and spring, and wonder at it.
I remember lying in bed, wrapped up in the personal love of God, just floating in it. When I turned over, the physical act of moving caused the emotional sensation of being loved to become even more acute.
That happened more than once; I think because moving around reminded me what physical sensation was, and that what I was feeling had nothing to do with that, even though it was so distinct and so present that I felt it had to be physical- until I moved, and knew it could not be.
Once I did this and even in the moment, the wonder flooded through me.
Why do You love me so? I asked Him.
It made no sense to me. Despite everything that I had said I believed, I did not think God could possibly be that interested, that in love with His own creation. He could not be that attached, that gentle, that involved.
Nothing in religion had prepared me for the actual love of God. Nothing that I sang or read or studied prepared me for it.
Because you're My daughter, He replied.
And for a moment, I remembered, in the deepest part of me, that I was born of Him. He was my Creator, the source of my life. He brought forth my life from Himself, out of His creative desire for me to exist.
Nothing else defined me, but Him.
But I find that it's hard to see like this, from day to day. From day to day, everything but that defines me.
I remember coming down out of one of those experiences, and feeling the loss of sight, of understanding.
I realized that here, we simply don't see clearly. We aren't interpreting correctly. Our knowledge is incomplete. It's like we're young children.
I can't help but think that when Paul says that now we see through a glass darkly and that when we were children, we acted like children, those metaphors are illustrating the same reality: that of the present life.
In this life, we don't see clearly, and we haven't grown up yet. We can't.
Which is why, I can't help thinking, the best things are faith, hope and love.
Another words, be good to one another. Be merciful.
Take hope in the extraordinary and sovereign love of God; He is absolutely and perfectly in charge. This is, I know, an absurd hope. It's a ridiculous faith.
What manner of God are You? I asked Him that night, suspended as I was in wonder and love.
The only One, He replied with His gentle humor.
The one and only God, the Living God. There is none beside Him. New wonder swept over me, as this sunk into me.
I understood then that the whole world is His; all of creation belongs to Him. He breathes through it, sustains it, loves it.
Everyone is His.
