Late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient and new; Late Have I loved You. Lo, You were within, but I outside, seeking there for you, and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong, I, misshapen. You were with me but I was not with You. They held me back far from You, those things which would have no being were they not in You. You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; You flashed, blazed, banished my blindness; You lavished Your fragrance on me, I gasped, and now I pant for You; I tasted You, and I hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.
~Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak. The LORD your God is in your midst, a Mighty One Who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His Love; He will exult over you with loud singing. I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach. … Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the LORD.
~ The passion of our Warrior King, shown in Zephaniah 3
Oh beloved, it is true.
Each of us have been hurt. And, the wounds of our warfare have scarred our souls. We are dreadfully hurt. Much of our pain is self-induced, but another source is the landmines of our existence upon which we step. We are just going through our life here, and so many situations – and people – blow up in our face.
Those of us with the beginnings of maturity, have begun to understand that the choice before us to allow the wounds to embitter us, or to allow them to make us better. But, in the painful milieu we inhabit. Every movement of our mind can make us wince and cry out for relief. We sense that things could be much better in Heaven someday, but until we arrive, we are just going to have to hang in there – and hurt.
And so, during this self-imposed waiting for a better place someday, we continue on in our foolish pursuits; bringing more scarring and pain. And others, doing the same keep burying the landmines and launching their own warfare against us. And, any time we sense G_d trying to move towards us, we scatter and run away.
But, perhaps we need to slow down and look at something.
What is heaven? Heaven is a place where our Absolute center of attention will be Jesus Christ. He Himself will be the Source and Summit of our joy. All activity and pleasure will be within the context of our relationship to Jesus, and a vast communion of people united with Him. Heaven is, then, where our desire to truly love and be Loved by the God Who is Love, will come true in an intimate communion with the Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Can we see it?
As Jesus laid out a prayer that should often be on our lips, He speaks of the Kingdom of G_d, that is advancing on our lives: On earth as it is in heaven…
Beloved, did you catch this? Don’t miss it. On earth as it is in Heaven. The same Love we yearn for someday in some place we have not yet seen, is available to us right now. It is G_d’s will that we be brought into His Family, forgiven of our sins, empowered by Grace, and to walk in the joy of His Presence.
We have been fighting against the very thing we hoped for someday. In the toxic roux of our selfish minds, we have kept trudging in the dark, trying to break through, when what really needs to happen is for us to surrender to the reality that G_d has already finished the problem of our separation and is moving toward us TO ACTUALLY GIVE US WHAT WE DESIRE.
Oh yes, we fight against it. But, Love wins. His profound concern for our goodness breaks down the walls of our resistance. And, as they come down; as the Light streams in, we hear the song of our King, joyously working to break down anything that would keep us apart from Him. Love has won the war. We look up, into those eyes of His. And we wonder why we ever even put up the slightest resistance.
So, do you feel the pain of life? Does it make you so touchy and tender that you recoil at the thought of G_d breaking through your misery? The pain is real, but our fear of the Solution is not. Tonight is your night. A Warrior, Mighty to Save, is singing a song of deliverance that He has written – just for you.
Tonight is your night. Surrender, that His Love can win the war in your life.
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
~C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
