Christian devotions to explore and experience the presence of God
A prayer of adoration
As heart beats and mind thinks, so I love you,
As world turns and stars burn, so I love you,
As life matures and death approaches, so I love you,
As tears fall in joy and sorrow, so I love you:
God.
Full stop and question mark.
You are a mystery that torments and delights me.
Come quickly dear Lord.
My life’s endurance can only just last till death.
Fill me with life
That I may live
And adore you
Why on earth do I say God loves me?
Part 3
This experience of God’s love is so unlike me. (I am not a particularly loving person). It seems ridiculous to suggest that I am somehow in charge of this phenomenon – able to give myself such uplifting experiences, while being completely unaware that it is me who is doing it. It seems much more reasonable to argue, and it fits in with the evidence much better, that there is a personal God, who is an active agent, who, from time to time takes the initiative and “visits” us with his love. In fact, this intermittent, haphazardness of the experience is strong evidence in its favour, because it is so theologically incorrect. God is always present with us, and his love never falters. Therefore, if it was a self-induced experience, utilising internalised values about God’s love for us, then why are we not able to “tune in” to the experience whenever we want? Instead, God seems to come to us unexpectedly, just now and then, and in that moment he reveals himself – and his nature is overwhelming love – and then he is gone again. Of course, it is theologically absurd to say, “He has gone again”, but this is how the experience works.
If it is a self-induced phenomenon, then, again, it’s an incredibly impressive one, and if it was self-induced, I would choose to indulge in it more often. Instead, it appears to be beyond my control. Whatever is happening, it certainly appears to be something that someone else is doing to me, rather than me, doing it to myself.
Why on earth do I say God loves me?
Part 2
I am not merely meditating on the principles of love and being uplifted by the profundity of an absolute, abstract quality. I can see that this would be a possibility. As someone who likes to think of themselves as a deep thinker, and someone who is often inspired by ideas and events, perhaps, as I consider how wonderful is the quality of love, and how wonderful it would be if I could be possessed by this abstract quality of love, perhaps I am able to conjure up an experience of love. However, again, this does not match at all what the experience feels like. I am not overcome by inspiration at an uplifting principle; it strikes me as a personal relationship.
However, I am not recalling some instance of an actual person loving me and extrapolating from that what it would be like to be loved like that again – only this time by an invented God figure. I am glad to say that I know what it is like to be loved and to love deeply. However, when I experience God’s love it is an entirely direct encounter with God that I experience. It is not like forms of Buddhist meditation where you do focus on someone you love and then share that emotion with others – including yourself. With that form of meditation, you are aware of what you’re doing, and are completely in charge of it. When I am experiencing God’s love, I am not at all in control. Perhaps the most striking feature is the way you are so suddenly caught up in God’s love – as well as how overwhelming the experience is. This fits in – as an image to try and explain it – with exactly how you would respond if, out of the blue, your dearest love, whom you have not seen for ages, and had no idea they were about to visit, suddenly burst into the room to embrace you.
Why on earth do I say God loves me?
(As this is rather a long article, I’m posting it in 5 chunks on successive days)
Part 1
I am sitting quietly alone in my room. If there was an observer, they would see nothing. Nothing outward happens, yet I say that, in my heart, I am experiencing the love of God – and that is why I say he loves me. I am experiencing it now; I am simply describing what is happening to me. Yet God is invisible, inaudible; he has no hands to touch. How can I uphold my claim? What do I mean?
Perhaps it is a delusion? Yet I never imagine anything else that cannot be corroborated. If my belief in God’s love is false, it never leads me to do anything harmful or strange – in fact, quite the contrary. I can talk perfectly rationally about my experience of God loving me – and accept the possibility that I am mistaken. I don’t seem to be missing any of my mental faculties.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking? I would really like it if there was a God, and if this God loved me, and so I have somehow conjured up a false experience of him loving me. It is something self-created. There is no-one outside of myself loving me; I have – somehow – created the experience. It’s a trick of the mind by which it is me promoting love to myself, but I have successfully fooled myself into thinking it is coming to me from a God-figure outside of myself. If it’s a trick, it’s a jolly good one, and I wish I had the ability to fool myself in other respects. I’m certainly not aware of fooling myself, and if you say, “Well of course you’re not aware of it, that’s how you’ve been fooled”, then I have to reply that I am a very self-reflective person, and it does not feel like I am doing this to myself. I’m well aware of what it is like to have a conversation with myself, and the key point of my experience of God is precisely that it does not feel like me; it feels like an experience coming from outside myself that I cannot control, but which is something that happens to me. I am the passive recipient, not the active agent.
Starting from a blank canvas
Of course, in reality this cannot be done. From the moment we are born, we start to accumulate the sum total of our life’s activity. Nevertheless, we understand the idea. A person comes to the realisation – either that they have gone terribly wrong, or simply that they could have done better – and they want to live a new life. However, if you are truly radical about this, you realise that everything needs to be changed. It is not simply a matter of correcting a few faults, avoiding a few of your “favourite sins” or adopting particular new behaviours that you regard as praiseworthy. Instead, you understand that the very way you think is inadequate. You have adopted values which, on reflection, you now realise are substandard – and this even applies to your good values. Added to the difficulty of amending a way of life affected by the huge weight of habit, is the realisation that even your good and noble traits are falling short of your new aim of being completely true to God.
It is a difficulty that perhaps the via negativa can help with: rather than saying what God is like, recognise what he is not like. You start by eliminating things that are unworthy of God, but then you realise that even good things do not do justice to the goodness of God, and so you remove them too. Imagine a truly beautiful scene: let’s say a hillside covered in wild flowers, a glorious oak tree to one side, all covered by an intense blue sky, with the sun just emerging from behind fluffy white clouds. In your mind, the scene expresses the goodness of God – but then you realise that nothing can truly do justice to his goodness. So, let’s successively remove item after item. The oak tree is wonderful, and you thought of it as an analogy of God’s majestic presence – but on further reflection, you realise that it comes nowhere near expressing his majesty, so, in your mind’s eye, just remove it from your picture. Then keep going, removing item after item until, ultimately, you end up with an empty picture. But not quite empty, because you realise that it is now as though you were looking at a blank canvas in an art gallery, and there is one last thing which you haven’t switched off – and so you switch off the light, and, in your imagination, you are suddenly in darkness. Now, you have succeeded in removing everything that falls short of the reality of God – but you are also sitting in empty darkness. Complete nothingness. Yet it is the experience of mystics through the ages that in that empty darkness, God is experienced, and there is a fullness in the emptiness beyond anything that could be expressed even in the most idyllic image with which you may have started. It is an act of supreme trust and faith to – in your mind – switch off that light, in the hope that – beyond all reasonable expectation – the reality of God will be experienced. Not communicated by anything, but just himself, as he truly is.
Yet – even if you could experience this fullness in emptiness, seeing God, as it were, in the darkness – surely you have to start to rebuild your life? You can’t just always sit in the darkness – though perhaps you can return to it from time to time and allow the darkness to enfold you, embracing again the emptiness in order to know how to live when you re-emerge into the light. For life is lived in the light, and we have to decide what to do with our lives. How then do you begin again?
I think there are two acts of faith that are required.
The first is to believe that – having touched base with God and committed yourself to a new start – it is possible to live in tune with God. The second is to accept that you will fail – almost as soon as you begin, and, certainly, very regularly – but not count that as fatal to your goal.
So, your new start is not in the manner of: “I will try really hard this time!”. Instead, you understand that you will always be dependent on the forgiving grace of God. Trust in his grace as being more important than the power of your own failure. You have set yourself the task of living with the God who is beyond all that life can express – so much so that he is only ultimately known – and not known – in the awesome still, empty darkness where, when you have taken everything away, all that is left is God. It is quite a journey to set out on! I think we are allowed to go one step at a time, and not despair if we trip up now and then.
The problem of perfection
If only he hadn’t said it. “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”.
I manage to be a good person quite easily. As I have lived a comfortable life and am blessed with quite a gentle, kind personality, I might even say that, on the whole, I am a very good person. Yet Jesus said the goal was perfection. This clearly is not possible, and it bothers me – not least because I don’t like to suggest that Jesus made a mistake. Moreover, in my moments of spiritual awareness of God, I really do feel so filled with his grace that I do feel that this must be what perfection is like. But, of course, it doesn’t last. We are physical creatures, with a whole load of evolved behaviours, not to say personal weaknesses, and then we feel disappointed that the glimpse of perfect harmony with God has been lost.
I think I will be returning to this problem quite often. I do want to explore what is or isn’t possible, and I don’t want to lay burdens on anyone by opening up the possibility of perfection, only to have people feel bad about themselves that they weren’t able to achieve it. There are many puzzles in the life of faith, and one of them is that we are called to live in communion with God, to keep in step with the Spirit, while being totally dependent on grace to achieve anything. We have received a command to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength – but we can do nothing without his grace.
Many of us feel that we go round an endless cycle of sin – repentance – forgiveness – grace – growth – failure. I want the goal of harmony with God to be an inspiring positive force in my life, and I don’t want to hurt anyone by suggesting that the failure to be perfect is a cause for self-condemnation, let alone despair. Yet the call is to live our lives in union with the God of love. This is so far beyond me, but, if you will bear with me, I will return to it from time to time and see what I can make of it.
I expect that the answer to the call to perfection will be grace. And always and always, I return to God’s grace as the life-imparting essence of God. His undeserved loving-kindness is what makes us whole. Yet what does God require of us in response? I am both inspired and wounded by the call to perfection. Perhaps in our flawed responses to God’s love, which are in literal terms ending in a failure to be perfect, there will be moments when his grace shines through. In particular situations, we find ourselves ministering God’s grace to others, and perhaps in those moments, his love is reflected in our faces, and God looks at us and says, “That will do”.
Faith
I do believe, but more than I believe, I trust.
I reach out my hand, and I know that I am alone, that no-one will take it, but still I trust that you see my outstretched arm, and you will touch my heart with your love, even though I did not touch you.
It makes no sense, and that is why I call it faith, but if it makes no sense, it accords with my experience. Over and over again I have called to you, and though I never hear any voice, still you answer me.
As the delicate butterfly cannot be grasped, as her flight cannot be predicted, so you are beyond my control. I know what it is to speak with myself, and sometimes I can be wise, but when you speak the shock of insight takes my breath away. As though the hard kernel has been broken open, the long-hidden truth emerges, and in your light hope springs like a new living shoot.
This cannot happen, but it does. Even if I decide I am mistaken and there truly is no-one there, yet when I reach out to you, I find you. I trust that you are there, and it is so.
This is more mysterious than all else in my life, and it has become more precious. I would love to understand it, and to some degree I have learnt how it works, but really it is beyond all understanding, and it just has to be lived.
And so I live by faith – or try to. And certainly I know that to live by faith is fullness of life.
Faith is the flame that shines in the darkness. Yes, you can blow it out, and it is gone, but then it lights itself again. I did not do it. I do not have that power to kindle the light, to ignite the spark of life that illuminates all reality. It is you who does this. Like someone in darkness I grope for something solid and turn around and turn around to find some solid point of reference. But, like a presence standing behind me, as I turn, you turn also to be always out of view, yet the presence abides. Standing with me in the darkness, literally backing me up, ready to catch me if I fall, directing me forward, and where I go, you go. And so, cupping my hands, I see the flame again, just enough to show me where I am, and, lighting up my face, you see me, and smile your love upon me.
Opening prayer
“In simple trust, in silence and in stillness, in the quiet darkness, where strivings cease, you will know me.”
Lord, I give myself into your keeping, my life into your hands. I will follow your guidance, and do as you say. May obedience become truly the same as loving you, for in obeying your word, I will find your love – experience your love and give you my love, and share your love with others – which is our calling.
May the truth of this prayer guide and sustain me through all trials and travails, through my failures and mistakes. May my trust in you never falter, even though I fail and betray you. May I ever put out my hand for you to take hold of me and lift me up. May I find joy in your presence, and peace for my soul. The truth of your abiding love is the bedrock of my life, and in joyful thanksgiving, I turn to you.
Amen
Why do I love God?
Because he first loved me. Before I ever knew him, he loved me. Knowing that meeting him would be the joy of my life, he called me to him, and continued to draw me with gracious acts of kindness till I heard his voice, looked up and saw him. Beholding him, he took my breath away. The beauty of his goodness, truth and love is like nothing else, beyond everything else, more precious than everything else combined. His love for me blew my mind; I could not take it in, even as he flooded my heart with light and love, full and overflowing, extravagantly pouring out, giving me a new love I had never known before, a love far beyond my capacity to love. Now I love because he loves me. It is not my love that I give, but his, yet at the same time it is my love because it his gift of love to me. So, I love him even more for giving me this gift, so beyond what I deserve, what I could ever have achieved on my own. It is his gift, but he tells me it is mine. He has given away his love to me, because he loves me.
And because of his love, I adore him. He catches me up to undreamt of heights – I who so naturally stoop low am lifted up. He anoints me with love, as though I am something – when even I call myself nothing. I love him because he loves me despite not deserving any of it. Yet it is his nature to love, yet even so, he is not simply expressing himself, but genuinely loving me, wanting me to respond, wanting me to be whole, and taking pleasure as I respond.
And he is so patient. As I take baby steps, he revels with delight to see me. Like a parent gazing at their beloved child, he looks at me. He does not need my love; he does not need to love me; he is complete in himself already. Yet such is his love that he simply loves to love. As a creative gift of life, he showers his love on me.
More than patient, he is long-suffering. For I hurt him. I wound the one I love. As he always knew I would, and yet still he called out to me to love him. I betray the one I love, over and over, yet over and over he forgives me. Why should he do this? It is so far beyond my understanding; so beyond what should be done, or what anyone would do. Yet he does it. His love for me never ends, never falters, never even dims. In his love for me, he still only ever wants for me to be whole, and to that end he will do anything, even sacrifice his very self. His love has such capability. Without him, there are harms that are done that can never be put right, but with him, everything can be healed. And perhaps for this I love him most of all. That when my actions should have ended our love affair and cast me far from him, when I finally condemn myself, he draws near and redeems me. He presents himself to me afresh. Before I have finished my tears of sorrow for my failures, weeping in deep lamentation that I have run from him, I discover that I have run again into his arms. Without realising it, thinking he was far from me, he had kept company with me in my despair, and now I find that I am once again in his embrace.
This love that he has given me, that I have found in him and through him, is unlike any other love – and for this reason I call it a holy love – “holy” simply as a way to try and say, “I cannot comprehend this”. There are other loves, and they too can lift you to perfect fulfilment, but even saying this, his love is still like no other.
He can reach me when no-one else can, when no-one else wants to. When I hate myself, he loves me. If all others should despise me, he would stand up for me.
His love gives me such joy. I cannot describe it. But I can experience it. I who am so shallow am lifted up to the heights of heaven. I cry for joy that he should love me. I pour out my tears in disbelief that he can do this – come to me and embrace me. The invisible, ineffable God, who is beyond us so completely, is so fully in my heart. Come dear Lord; visit me again with your over-flowing love, that I may love you afresh, and love you more.
Spiritual Devotion