A Shadow of God’s Love
Today is Valentine’s Day. A day of hearts and flowers and chocolate, so much chocolate. Love is in the air. While we focus on romantic love, is God’s love ever far away? Without God’s love there would be no romantic love. But all the love we celebrate today is only a shadow of God’s love.
Romantic Love
It’s great to be in love. Our step is lighter, there is a song in our heart, we feel happy. Especially if that love is requited. Of course, this high can’t remain forever. Eventually it settles down into something more manageable.
Literature is filled with stories of people who loved someone or something better than their own life. We love those stories of self-sacrifice for something great than themselves. Christian Scripture is full of references to love. Depending on the translation, love is mentioned anywhere from 300 to 550 times.
The apostle John tells us in 1 John chapter 4: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (7-9) “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” (16) “We love Him because He first loved us.” (19)
Psalm 63 tells us, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.” (3) God’s love is better than life itself. This psalm refers to God’s love in human terms. The writer thinks of the beloved throughout the night “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.” (8) – and sings constantly in praise of the beloved – “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” (4).
Love and Attachment
We love because God first loved us. God planted within us the capacity to love and be loved. When that love is nurtured by others, we grow in our own ability to love.
As humans, love is attached to others and things. Babies don’t know what love is. The loving smile of their parents invites a smile in response. Thus, they are taught about love. Children with healthy attachments to their parents or other significant adults in their life, grow up able to form healthy attachments themselves. But even those healthy attachments can go awry and become addictive. This can happen to anyone.
Love Alone
Gerald May in his book, The Dark Night of the Soul, says that the dark night experience enables us to have faith, hope, and love, without attaching it to anything specific. “I sense there is something very special about the transformed qualities of faith, love, and hope. … in their truly contemplative and transformed state, faith, hope, and love are tied to no particular ends; they have no object.”
But love without attachment? Is that even possible? When I think of love, I think of God, yes, but specific people. My spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings, friends. All merit my love. Is it possible to let go of even these attachments in order to experience love in the abstract, without any form; love as pure being?
That’s where God comes in. Rev. Terrance W. Klein states, “Whatever God is, as St. Thomas Aquinas once put it, God is “not us.” So, when we encounter that which is “not us,” we cannot be blamed for responding as ourselves, for creating something that corresponds to our understanding. … If God is “not us” then God begins where we end. At its best, religion takes us to the borders of human life—there to await God.” (The danger of mistaking religion for God | America Magazine)
Contemplative Love
May tells us, “Contemplative love is completely beyond comprehension. It is not the love of one thing to the exclusion of others, for that would be attachment. True love is like some infinite way of being that we become part of: a flowing energy of willingness, an eternal yes resounding with every heartbeat.”
God’s love is essence, it underlies all of creation. It may express itself through humans, but it transcends human love. Pure and unadulterated. Human love is tainted by our own needs and prejudices. God’s love knows no prejudice. It is there for everyone. To walk in that love is a wonder. It may be experienced briefly, but quickly our human brain attaches an image to it rather than sit in the fullness of pure love. And so, the love we have is but a shadow of God’s love.
Only a Shadow of God’s Love
As one song goes, the love we have for God, is only a shadow of God’s love for us. This God who begins where we end is beyond our ability to comprehend. As Rev. Klein further states: “God then appears, as the security beyond my insecurity, as the silence into which I must go down. Perhaps one could say that God does not appear. Unless God’s appearance simply is the silencing of wind, illusory wind.”
Or, to put it another way, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12
So as we celebrate the wonder and beauty of human love, let us remember that this love is only a shadow of God’s love.
To listen to a version of the hymn, Only a Shadow of your Love for Me, click here.
(For a look at another aspect of the dark night, see When Memories Are Transformed into Hope – Patricia M Robertson)
This post is part of a series of blog posts on the Psalms. Sign up to follow this blog and receive a free copy of Still Dancing, the second book in my Dancing through Life Series. click here to sign up
(Please note – in order to help ensure you receive email with link to new book, please add my email, patricia@patriciamrobertson.com to your contact list. Some servers are quick to send newsletters to spam or other boxes.)
Leave a Reply