I’m sitting at my desk watching the sky lighten as sunrise approaches. Behind our home the trees have lost their shadows, so I see them in all their detail.
I can’t help but feel the metaphor. The past few days have been difficult for me, and so there’s been a shadow laying over my heart. Just as night’s shadows make the trees indistinct, my shadows make it harder for me to see the many blessings that make up my life. I turn inward and peer at the hurts that are such a part of my life. Like worrying a sore tooth, I can’t seem to stop trying to bring more and more definition and clarity to the dark shapes in my heart. The betrayals I’ve felt. The seductions I’ve given into. The abuse I’ve experienced. I get caught in a cycle of hurting that becomes an end in itself.
The sun is now passing the horizon. Its light has suddenly burst over the trees, and the woods have again lost their detail. Now, though, it is because the light has overwhelmed the dark.
Despite shadows that have become my burden, I still feel the bursts of light that come from the love of others. My wife’s unfailing love never fails to press the shadows away. It’s not that the hurts are forgotten; it’s that they become irrelevant. Unqualified love spreads its light throughout the heart, warming and comforting it until what matters most is simply being a part of that love.
Human love, despite its power and beauty, is incomplete. It is itself a shadow of the the love that is God. ” God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1Jo4:16). The love of one person for another has the power to render the pains & trials of life irrelevant; the love of God for us overwhelms life itself, making the only reality His love, which is to say God Himself.
My experience of the transcendent love that is God is limited–very much so. I can’t say that I’ve experienced the ecstasy that seems to accompany the unmediated experience of the love that is God. I’m not even sure I want that experience in this life. When we read accounts from the lives of saints who have experience this love, it is frightening. Those who have experienced it become someone different; the gift overwhelms them.
Many seem to withdraw from the world, either literally or by entering a state of being wherein they are not fully “here.” To desire the pure experience of God’s love in this life is not to be taken lightly.
Which is why, I think, that God give us his love in shadow, the unqualified love between individuals.
Just as the indirect experience of the sun nurtures us, so the love of others, and our love of them, sustains us.
