God, Madly in Love

It's been awhile since I've posted, but for some reason I feel God pushing me back to blogging :) Over the months, I've learned a couple things in my relationship with God. The worst has been the utter distance we have with him here in this world; it's a frustration, a frustration of desire. It's a hanging of fulfillment until we are with him. Augustine called it God's way of extending the soul to make room in it for the love and joy we will have with him when we are in our Beloved's arms. But, it is still frustration...

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It's knowing the Love of our life is permeating our every part, our every atom, yet we cannot touch him, cannot hold him; the satisfaction of his embrace is oh so close, yet no where to be found. But we are left longing in the suspense of the romance with him. And the thing is, it creates this tension in our story with God. It creates tension in our souls, in our bodies, in our emotions. A romantic tension which can only be satisfied with his return and our forever marriage to him. When, oh when, will we have him finally to touch, to hold, to never let go? Soon. But how soon is left up to our Father. In this life we will have trouble, Jesus said. That trouble is not always sin or evil, but instead it's also the trouble of missing him and being in his embrace.

The best thing I have learned is more of how much God is madly in love with us. No matter how much we ignore him, he still craves us, desires us more than ever. He will still rejoice in us and will do anything to make us happy, to make us smile. And when we are finally in his arms, our Lover's arms, he will rejoice over us as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. His love is never ending, and far transcends our fickleness, our ups and downs and is always pursuing us to win our hearts and marry him. He will always pursue, until we are his, married, the celebration begins, the balloons are released to the sky, and forever more.

And, then the ironically sad part, God wants us to be happy while we wait patiently for him. True, he does want us to mourn for the loss of others, to wait quietly, crying inside for his return. But he also wants us to rejoice in his Spirit while we wait patiently on our God. It's why in Ecclesiastes God says be happy with your spouse and your work. Be happy in your family and what you do in this world. He is saying, I want you to be happy while you are away from me because my Kingdom starts here in this world with my Holy Spirit. And sometimes this leaves us alone with him even when surrounded by believers and community. The romance with God has a way of isolating us even when we have more family and friends than we can count. Because we are missing our Beloved. And inevitably, it comes to us standing in the middle of a field alone yelling at the sky how much we love our Lover Jesus Christ. And though our love story with him is missing so much on this earth before his return, he loves us so much and is so unselfish that he wants us to smile from the depths of our hearts while we worship and love him here. Even though he is away. He wants us to be happy :) And that's because he is good. He is very good :)