And I Love You

It’s hot, the heat, in fact, is all kinds of bothersome. It shouldn’t be this hot and yet it is—how is it that it could already be this unbearably warm at four in the morning (in Canada no less)? Yet the day has barely started and here I am, once more drawn to write because it’s too hot and I can’t sleep, because once more the need to write is so palpable—my fingers itch for the feel of keys under them and my ears for the relentless tick, tick, tick which accompanies each keystroke. And maybe because to not write, when the desire is so potent, is far worse a prospect than sitting here perpetually conscious of how displeasing the temperature really is. Hence, here I am; writing.

And thinking. Mulling over this and that; the start of the new semester, the day’s activities, religion—love. Indeed love. The most wonderful thing about Christianity and certainly one of the most frightening, is the love of God. It’s so very fascinating, as mesmerizing as it is so unequivocally downright terrifying—incontestably, it’s altogether ridiculous in scope. That a being could love so ferociously, rather, that anyone could be loved with such passion—much less myself—is just so astounding. Of course I’m not the first to have stood in wonder at the prospect of divine love (and surely I won’t be the last) but as vast a sea as is his love for us, so too is our awe in the contemplation thereof. And if we are indeed in awe, then we are struck, and in being struck, propelled to dwell in and contemplate on this very love that the experience of which far outmatches anything I could ever put into words.

Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. – Isaiah 43:4 ESV

It is the love of God which I find to be the supreme argument for Christianity in the realm of comparative religion. All other faith systems fall short in that they espouse a vague impersonal force or a deity that is so completely bankrupt and so greatly outstripped by Yahweh in love. God’s love is in itself the embodiment of all the great love stories we have been told since childhood. Once there was the lover and the beloved, then there was loss and thus the lover must literally displace heaven and hell, to draw his beloved once more to him and as is echoed in the most fascinating of tales, in every promise, in the most loving embrace, they are reunited, paradise is regained, they are to live happily forever after. All these shadows of what could and should be, find their realization in the love of God for his children which is woven throughout the pages of the Bible. The tale is an epic, a romance, wherein all obstacles give way, even death itself is overcome—the lover gives his life for the beloved yet–behold!–death cannot hold him captive!

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:37-39 ESV

And if something more wonderful could ever be said, I know not what.

Certainly the above goes a long way in putting into words what I feel in my heart.

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