To Love God

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to love God is to love what God loves

          Richard Rohr (Daily meditation 5/27/2024)

 

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I hear it often

I say it often

 

“I love God”

 

I

Love

God

 

But I wonder if sometimes God feels a little bit like sweet Eliza

who once demanded

 

Don’t talk of love, show me

 

How do we love God?

We love God by loving what God loves

 

Easier said than done

Because God’s love is big, really big

God’s love is inclusive, totally inclusive

God’s love is persistent, never ender

God’s love is unconditional

 

More than that God’s love is

Giving

Forgiving

Sacrificial

Reconciling

Restorative

 

Wow!

 

Sometimes it is easier than others

It is easy to love what God loves

When I get up in the morning, and see the mountain

Coated with white, colored by the sunrise

Soaring into a brilliant blue sky

 

It is harder to love what God loves

when my comfort

when the profit margin on my retirement account

relies on the abuse of the planet

 

It is easy to love what God loves

When I am asked to love a cute kitten

Or a cuddly dog

Or even a reasonably nice human creature (although that is harder)

 

But it is hard to love what God loves when I am asked to love

An abuser

A liar

 

When I am asked to love a person who feels like a threat

Who is a threat

Who looks differently

Talks differently

Believes differently

 

When I am asked to love one

Who requires

Forgiveness

Generosity

Patience

And yes, sacrifice

 

I can love my children

And my grandchildren

My church members, and assorted friends

I can love those who write things that make my heart sing

 

It is not so easy to love that person who is part of the MAGA movement

Whose Christianity is seasoned with judgment, hate, retribution, exclusion

Who loves guns more than children

 

But I am called to love whom God loves

And God loves them, as well as me

God loves those I find difficult, as well as those I find sympathetic

 

How can we possibly do it?

“We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

We start by being loved

By accepting love

 

We take love in (we have the choice not to)

And then we give love out

“If we love one another, God remains in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us” (1 John 4:12).

 

This takes

“both work and surrender”  (Rohr).

 

It is work (yes it is) to be loved

It takes surrender, to receive love

 

It takes work to love (duh)

And surrender to give love

We have to get ourselves out of the way (that is both work and surrender)

 

That is how we get broken open

Cracked

So that love gets in, and then flows out

 

It is then that we start seeing

Seeing the planet

Seeing others

Seeing the joy, the pain, seeing everything!

 

It is then that our worlds expand, explode

And we reach the point where “we are not the central reference point anymore.”

 

“We love in greater and greater circles until we can finally do what Jesus did: love and forgive even our enemies.”  (Rohr)