People need people. We are innately programmed to be in a relationship. God lives in a relationship with His Son and The Holy Spirit. The love among the Trinity is the same kind of love we must share in family. One entity with parts that roll up into one ball of love – separate but one, united in love. The Lord wants us to love one another this way. He gave us each other so that we can see Him in one another. The thought of it is so beautiful to me because it says so much about the love of God for humanity. It tells me that God is love, a love that brings me to weeping and sobbing because of its indescribable depth and my unworthiness of it yet simultaneously offers me peace “beyond all understanding” because I know He loves me with that same love and forgives me and picks me up when I fall and teaches me and comes and gets me when I am lost.
My confidence in the knowledge that God loves me is unshakable and that is a gift from God. I know it with everything I am, with every breath I take, with every thought I have. I know God is my Father; I know His Son is my Saviour and One in Being with my Father and I know the Spirit proceeds from the Father and is glorified with the Father and the Son. And I know that I have access to all of this by just saying “yes.” In fact, My Lord waits for me constantly to enter into a deeper and deeper relationship with Him. This is the only sure thing I live for each day of my life. It is the only thing that restores me, keeps me going, offers me solace, and imbues me with courage and a reason to get up every morning. To be sure, I certainly struggle and agonize with my own ego and with anxieties and with sin – on a regular basis. But the knowledge of His love for me brings me back to Him no matter what I have done.
From this relationship stems all else in my life. Everything. Finally, the rest of my life has found its appropriate place underneath my relationship with the triune God. I rejoice when my life is in its appropriate order. I suffer when it is not and yearn for the right even as I am sinning. It is a constant conscious choice to say yes to Him and stay in order and I am amazed at how easily I slink away thinking I can do it alone or change the order, or choose something other than Him for even a second. The pain of His loss is as deep as His love because without Him I have no love. I am empty and cold and hopeless.
My soul cries out: O Come O Come Emmanuel….and ransom captive Israel…who mourns in lonely exile here…until the Son of God appears. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel…shall come to you O Israel.
Come Jesus Christ and restore order to the House of David, gathering your royal people to yourself. Come as the baby wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes, the Word of God, the Logos, speechless and fragile, a child under the bosom of his mother. How do we not recognize you when your coming is so completely an immersion into us – into the most delicate and helpless among us. Have pity on us and let your sacred heart burn with forgiveness for us from the manger/gibbet that is your resting…your dying place for love of us. How do I love thee God? I love thee not out of hope for heaven or to evade the eternal fire but instead I love thee because you are my God, my saviour and my life.