He changed what?!?

 

Scripture:   Psalm 119:129-136 Common English Bible (CEB)

129 Your laws are wonderful!
    That’s why I guard them.

130 Access to your words gives light,
    giving simple folk understanding.

131 I open my mouth up wide, panting,
    because I long for your commandments.

132 Come back to me and have mercy on me;
    that’s only right for those who love your name.

133 Keep my steps steady by your word;
    don’t let any sin rule me.

134 Redeem me from the people who oppress me
    so I can keep your precepts.

135 Shine your face on your servant,
    and teach me your statutes.

136 Rivers of tears stream from my eyes
    because your Instruction isn’t being kept.

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Message He changed what?!?

Good morning on this 8th Sunday after Pentecost.  

I am so grateful that the Quarantine Qrew are all well and able to record their portions of the service in the sanctuary.  Even though we aren’t able to worship there in person yet, to me it just feels so much better to be able to see that sacred space, to watch the candles being lit as we prepare our hearts and minds for worship.  It soothes my soul.  And their music - Jordan selects hymns and other sacred music that fit the focus of the message; Kenneshae, Jessica, Jorge and Joe lift their voices like a choir of angels, each part weaving around and through the others to create such beauty.  Qrew - I thank you for being a blessing to us all.

Today they sang a portion of Psalm 119, which is where today’s reading comes from.  Psalm 119 has 176 verses - it is the longest of all the Psalms.  Which is why we only preach on a few verses at a time.  I suspect, if I began with verse 1, I could devote a fairly lengthy sermon series to just this Psalm.  Today we are focused on verses 129-136.  And I was struck by the first verse in this passage.  

“Your laws are wonderful!  That’s why I obey them.”  Imagine obeying the law of the land for no other reason than because we love the law!  Not because we fear punishment, or because it protects others, or for any other reason - but because we just simply love the Law!  I mean, I know lawyers who love the law, but it seems like that’s more about the study and application of the law than love for the laws in and of themselves.  A lawyer friend’s  job is researching laws and precedents for a judge.  She loves her job!  It’s like a treasure hunt.  But the Psalmist says, “Your laws are wonderful!  That’s why I obey them.”  I love your Law, your Word, and so I obey it.

And verse 130. “Access to your Word gives light, giving simple people understanding.”  Or, as the Message version says “Break your word open, let the light shine out, let ordinary people understand their meaning.”  We are certainly very good at complicating stuff and making it more difficult to understand.  Theologians and religious scholars, like politicians, have apparently never considered the concept of keeping it simple.  Some of my seminary classmates took the opportunity of their very first sermon as ordained persons to list all of the long and complicated words we learn to explain theological concepts and then said, “I will never use those words in a sermon again.”  Which usually got a chuckle, because who hasn’t sat through a sermon in which the preacher’s words were pretty much Greek to them (or Hebrew or German). But not in any way “giving simple people understanding.”  God’s Law is at its core pretty simple. Do not murder.  Do not steal.  Take care of the poor.  Feed the hungry.  Care for the sick. Honor your elders.  Honor the Sabbath.  Love one another.  We can and do complicate it, but as it stands it is elegant and beautiful.  And simple - which is not the same as simplistic or easy.   “Access to your Word”, the psalmist said, “gives light.” 

“Redeem me from the people who oppress me, so I can keep your precepts.”  It is thought that this Psalm was written after the exiles returned from Babylon, where the rules of their captors made obedience to the Law difficult at best, where access to God’s word was limited.  It is not surprising then, that the psalmist longed for it, mouth opened wide and panting, as the deer pants for the water.  Nor that he wept to see that God’s instructions are not being kept.   

A friend was showing me a picture of the Lord’s prayer made into a cross.  He said he wanted to make something like it, but he had to find a different one to use as a pattern because this one had the wrong words.  I thought he was referring to the debts/trespasses/sins part, but he was looking at something else entirely.  Instead of “lead us not into temptation” this cross said, “Do not let us fall into temptation.”  I told him these words actually are not wrong. 

You see, on May 22, 2019 Pope Francis approved this wording.  He believed the traditional English translation of the prayer was not only a bad translation but bad theology “because”, he said, “it speaks of a God who induces temptation.  I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. God does not lead us into temptation.  Ever.  We might fall into temptation, or be led there by the Evil One, but God does not lead us into temptation.”

He is so very right.   It was not God, after all, who tempted Jesus in that desert place.  He didn’t say, “Get thee behind me, God” when Peter tried to talk him out of going into danger.   Even in Eden, Eve didn’t take the fruit from God.  Theologically, Pope Francis is exactly right.  God does not lead us into temptation. 

But seriously, Your Holiness.  Changing the Lord’s Prayer?   I mean, I have to pay very close attention every Sunday to make sure I say “debts” instead of “trespasses,” which is my default. It’s how I learned the Lord’s Prayer growing up.  Most of us pray it without having to look at the words on the screen, because we have been saying the same words - perhaps unthinkingly- for our whole lives.  Plus, I know how difficult change can be in a congregation of 100 or less.  I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to make that change in all of the Roman Catholic congregations in the English speaking world.  I so do not envy those parish priests.  I mean, there are still churches in the US where the Latin Mass is being said - and that was changed in 1962!  

The psalmist said it this way, “Keep my steps steady by your word; don’t let any sin rule me.”  Keep my steps steady . . .  do not let me fall . . . Do not let sin rule me.  

Sometimes it almost feels like walking a balance beam or one of those rope bridges in Indiana Jones movies. Especially right now, when it would be so easy some days to just give in to the temptation to give up.  Stop taking showers.  Stay in our pajamas 24/7. Stop reaching out.  Stop answering the phone.  Stop caring about others.  Stop caring about ourselves.  Obsess over our Twitter feed, or Facebook.  Give in to our frustration and lash out in anger, yelling at people we disagree with, or calling them names. It would be so easy because frankly, no one is watching. I mean, I live alone and the cats don’t hold me to any particular standard, as long as they get fed.  There’s no one here to call me on any misbehavior.  There is nothing to keep me from falling into temptation.  

Except God.  And God’s word.  

God is here with me, to keep my steps steady

God’s Word, the Law, is here to remind me to love myself, so that I might love others.  To care for myself, so that I might care for others.

God is here.

And so we pray . . .

Lord, keep us from falling into temptation, 

And deliver us from evil.  Amen.

Solomon Speaks

Scripture:   Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19 (NRSV)

13 For neither is there any god besides you, whose care is for all people, 

16 For your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all.  17 For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power, and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it.

18 Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose.

19 Through such works you have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins.

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Message Solomon Speaks

Good morning on this 7th Sunday after Pentecost.  For those of you who care about these things, the color associated with this particular season in the church is green.  Hence the green stole, and the greenish flowers -  y’know, it is surprisingly difficult to find green floral decorations.  Even on Amazon, which has pretty much everything.

Please note - no real flowers are used in the decoration of my little recording studio space.   Cats tend to eat real flowers, and that is not good for them.

For those of you reading along in your Bibles at home, unless you have a study bible or a Catholic bible, you will not find the Wisdom of Solomon.  It is part of the Apocrypha or  deuterocanonical books, which are found between the Old and New Testaments.  In around the year 367 church leaders decided and declared that there were 66 books generally believed to have been divinely inspired, and those books make up the canon,  the total of the Old and New Testament books.  The books known to us as the Apocrypha are considered more informational than authoritative.  For example - the Wisdom of Solomon.  While we tend to accept Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon as having been written by Solomon, this was probably not, as it didn’t appear until about 50 years before the birth of Christ.   Because its authorship is questionable, it was left out of the canon.  Nevertheless, there is much to gain from reading these books so I preach from them now and again.

Solomon was known for his wisdom, a particular gift granted to him by God.   In 1 Kings chapter 3, God came to Solomon and told him to ask for whatever he most wanted to have.  Solomon said, “9 Give your servant .. . an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil”. . . 10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11 God said to him, “Because you have asked this, 2 I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.”   As this book, the Wisdom of Solomon, is mostly an exhortation to be wise, it makes sense that whoever wrote it attributed it to Solomon.  This was actually a fairly common practice.  Several of the letters we attribute to Paul were written by other people, with the knowledge that if they said Paul wrote them, the letters would have more authority.  Again, a fairly unremarkable practice for that time and place.  

The first thing we read here is “there is no god besides you who cares for all people.”  We believe there is One God, and that all of the other gods mentioned in the Bible are false gods - non-existent.  In Solomon’s time, however, they firmly believed that there were many gods, but this God was the only one who had chosen Israel.  The others might be the god of some city or a particular river, or fertility or lightning, or some other specific thing.  All of those other gods only really cared about the thing or place that was their particular focus, and were quick to punish severely if they weren’t pleased with their worshippers, or if they were just having a bad day.  But this God, Israel’s God, cared for all people, and all places.  This God had come with them, not bound to any one place, but caring for them where ever they were.  This God said, “take care of the strangers, the aliens among you, the poor, the widows and orphans.  Be good to your slaves.  Love me and love your neighbor.”  This God cared for all people, not just Israel.  This God did not rule through fear of punishment, rather through kindness born of righteousness,  “. . .your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all. . .  you judge with mildness and with great forbearance you govern us.”

OK, this is the part where I point out that the God I grew up with was a lot more like all those other gods than the one described here.  These attributes - kindness, righteousness, mildness, forbearance, forgiveness - just weren’t part of the God I learned to fear and dislike as I grew up.  I rejected that God and the church that taught me about that God, and stayed separated from both for decades.  I am deeply grateful that I eventually learned that what I had been taught was wrong.  Sure, God would punish the unrepentant - the evil queen Jezebel getting eaten by dogs comes to mind - but only after she had been given opportunities to change and still chose the dark side.  Or as said here, “You show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power, and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it.”  Insolence in the face of God’s great power pretty much defines Jezebel’s attitude even after Elijah proved without question that the God of Israel was far more powerful than Baal, the god she worshipped.  Her response to that was to order the prophet Elijah killed.  Had she repented God would have forgiven, even as the city of Ninevah was forgiven when they turned back to God.  

“Your strength is in your righteousness”. . . .”you have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins.”  

The righteous must be kind.  Righteous means being morally right, acting rightly.  The righteous are the people who do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, not because there is any particular reward connected. The righteous don’t go pointing fingers and speaking down to the people they disapprove of or disagree with, but show their kindness in their restrained use of language.  Our strength, like God’s, is in our righteousness - and righteousness is kind.  I look at posts on Facebook and Twitter from clergy colleagues and other friends whose anger at various situations causes them to speak intemperately, repeating unfounded rumors, rushing to judgment based on those rumors, and falling back on name calling and accusations.  Now, most of my clergy colleagues went to college, maybe also seminary.  They have words available to them, whole dictionaries full of words, that are not ugly.  That can make their disagreement clear without being unkind.  It is absolutely right to speak out against injustice or against a position, behavior, or statement you firmly believe is incorrect.  It is not necessary to be ugly about it.  Take masks, for example.  Whether I believe wearing a mask is the right thing to do or not, I do not get to attack a person who thinks the opposite - physically or verbally.  I do get to politely express my opinion and my reasoning, and they get to tell me their opinion and reasoning - also politely.  If the other person is not kind, that does not excuse me to do as they do.  The righteous must be kind.  That is our strength.

One of the reasons that so many people stay away from church and church folk is that we have forgotten that the righteous must be kind.  Or maybe we never knew it, although I kind of think that “love one another” sort of implies being kind.  We hear people say “Christians hate the LGBTQIA people,” and “Christians are racist,” and “Christians are hypocrites.” And we want to say “Not me!  I’m not that kind of Christian!”  But one reason so many believe these things is that way too many Christians have forgotten to be kind.  And no, telling someone “You are a nice person, but you are an abomination because you are a woman preacher” is in no way being kind. (Yes, I have been told that - more than once.  It comes with the territory, I’m afraid.)

God has the power to do as God likes yet chooses to judge with mildness and govern us with great forbearance, offering grace and forgiveness to the repentant in place of punishment.  And because of this, we who are God’s people have hope.  We have no doubt of God’s power, God’s righteousness, and God’s love for us.  

And here’s the thing - all people are God’s people.  

God loves all people, 

cares for all people, 

behaves with righteousness towards all people, 

offers forgiveness to all people.

Asks only that we love him, and love our neighbors,

And that we be kind

To all people.

All Shall Be Well

Scripture:  Isaiah 55:10-13 (NRSV)

10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,  11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

12 For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

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Good morning.  Today is the 6th Sunday after Pentecost and the 17th Sunday of online worship.  I know . . . I had to count the Sundays on my calendar twice because that seems like a very long time.  It HAS been a very long time, maybe especially for those of us with little in-person human contact in this quarantine time.   

During the Elders meeting last Sunday we talked about the Desert Fathers and Mothers who were hermits - voluntarily, not like us right now - and how even they had to gather together from time to time for human contact - to share communion and discuss any issues that had arisen in their community. Because even though they lived miles apart and rarely saw each other in person, they were community.  Even though they lived miles apart and rarely saw each other, they came together to remind themselves that no human is completely self-sufficient.  We need each other.   In today’s world we do not need to walk miles in the desert to see another human.  We have many ways of staying in contact, of being community.  We have email and text messages, Facetime and Skype, Facebook and Messenger, Zoom and Google groups, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, Kik, and probably others I don’t know about - and even hand written notes delivered by the Post Office.   The Desert Fathers and Mothers had none of that.  And yet, separated by miles and coming together in person only on rare occasions, they were still community.    As are we.  We come together here, on our computers and tablets and phones, to worship.  To share the Lord’s Supper together.  To pray and to sing.  The Desert Fathers and Mothers lived in their caves for decades.  We will not.  Although we do not know how long our present reality will continue, and the uncertainty is crazy-making, we remember always that we are community, even in solitude. 

So when I read the Scripture reading and saw verse 12, which begins “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace” I thought to myself, “No, that’s not what it was like.  There was no joy when we went out.” Because I was thinking of that last Sunday we were together in the sanctuary.  I had to back up and consider this verse in the larger context.  Isaiah 55 says to the exiles in Babylon, yes, you are in exile right now.  Right now it is like the winter, the time when it rains and snows, which lasts as long as it needs to in order for the crops to be watered.  But when that ends, when you have heard and absorbed my word, when you have inclined your ear and listened to me, when you have returned to me in your hearts, then you will be going home and this is what it shall be like!  It will be wonderful!  Beautiful, useful, healing plants will grow where before there were only weeds.  The mountains will sing!  The trees will applaud!

And you, you will go forth from your exile in joy, and return to Jerusalem in peace.

OK, now I can better see a relationship between this and our current situation.  In exile, the people of Judah did not have a temple. They had no place where they could make  their sacrifices.  No place to offer their tithe.  (We do, by the way.  We have PayPal and bill pay and the postal service.  Plenty of ways to offer your tithe.  Just a reminder.). The people felt cut off and isolated.  They cried out, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”  Through Isaiah, God assures them that it will be ok.  This is a time of preparation for new growth.  This is a time to become closer to God, to pay more attention to your spiritual life without distractions, “spend[ing] your money on that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy.”  This is a time to remember why Church exists - to carry the Good News to the ends of the earth.  My word, which goes out, he said, will not return empty, but will accomplish my purpose. “You shall call nations that you do not know, and nations you do not know shall run to you because of the Lord your God, for he has glorified you.”  

I do not like living in exile.  I’m pretty sure you don’t either.  Certainly the people of Judah didn’t.  And truthfully, the return to Jerusalem wasn’t quite as joy-filled and wondrous as Isaiah prophesied.  They didn’t really know peace right away when they got there.  There were issues, serious issues, when they returned.  They couldn’t just return to the way things were when they left.  They had deal with significant changes in their expectations.  Some of them really didn’t like the changes. There were disagreements and resentments over the ways in which they were constrained to go forward.  They had to make compromises, and no one really loves compromises.  Which all sounds a bit more like what we can anticipate when we return to our Sanctuary.  

But that’s down the road a piece.  Right now we are living in exile.  We are sitting under the willows where we have hung our harps, crying out to God, wanting to go back to our old lives.  I know I am.  I miss hair cuts (and color) and pedicures and shopping for myself!   Eating in restaurants.  Hanging out with friends.  I miss my office.  I mean, have you seen the stained glass window in there? I miss Sunday worship - all of it. Getting to my office at 6 am, writing my message, and preparing the sanctuary, saying hello to everyone as you wander in.  I even miss the nervousness I feel every Sunday in the last 20 minutes or so leading up to the prelude.  I miss sharing communion with you all, and potlucks in Fellowship Hall . . . I miss all of that.    Although, to be honest, I don’t miss the stairs at all.  

But, you know, there is that whole sending God’s word out, so that it might accomplish God’s purpose thing.  When our worship is online and can be accessed any time, day or night, we are more available to “nations we do not know.”  It is one thing to say to a friend, “Hey, you should come to church with me one Sunday.”  It is a totally different thing to say, “Hey, we had the most amazing music in worship this week.  You should check it out on YouTube.”  Or,  “I preached on that very thing a month ago.  You can find it on our YouTube channel.”  And we are saying these things not just to folks who live in Selma, but people who live in Nevada, or Virginia.  To people who are not especially fond of Christians or any organized religion, but are open to listening.  Who are open to maybe changing their mind.  “Incline your ear, and listen, so that you may live,” said the Lord.  Or even people who feel their sins are so great they are not worthy of coming to worship.  “let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”   While we are in exile, while we are living our lives on the internet, while we are waiting out that season of rain and snow,  we can reach these people, people who might not be reached, who were not being reached, who maybe didn’t feel like they would be welcomed no matter how many times we said “All means ALL.”  

In this time of uncertainty, there are a lot of people looking for assurance that things will be ok.  Looking for something to hold on to that will get them through the coming months, or weeks, or even just a day.  We have that something.  We have faith in God that when this time of exile is over, things will be well - all shall be well.  Things will be different, no doubt.  But all shall be well in the Lord.  

Let us then focus our selves on sending God’s word out, like rain on the fields, speaking of God’s love and forgiveness, God’s mercy and compassion, in all the places we usually do not reach.  For it will not come back empty, but shall accomplish God’s purpose.  And all shall be well.  

Falling in Love

Scripture.  Song of Solomon 2:8-13   (NRSV)

8 The voice of my beloved!
    Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
    bounding over the hills.

9 My beloved is like a gazelle
    or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
    behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
    looking through the lattice.

10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away;

11 for now the winter is past,
    the rain is over and gone.

12 The flowers appear on the earth;
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree puts forth its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away.

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Message:   Falling in Love

When I saw that the Song of Solomon was one of the readings for today, I really couldn’t help myself. I mean, when is the last time you heard a sermon on the Song of Solomon?  It is a rather explicit love song, after all. I thought it would be fun, and an opportunity to stretch our thinking.   It is always a bit tricky to select the scripture reading a month or so ahead of time.  You never know what will happen in between that time and the time the message is actually written.  Because, you know, I really thought that by July we would surely be back in the sanctuary for worship.  Smaller worship, shorter, with no singing and fewer people and masks. But  . . .

Here we are, still worshipping online.  I was listening to an interview with a musician whose band had just finished a gig that was live-streamed to the audience, and they talked about how difficult it was to perform in an empty room. They are used to feeding off the audience, getting energy from the response . . . . I can relate.  And I am sure the Quarantine Qrew can also - like me, they are performing all by themselves in their homes, and Jordan puts it all together in 4 part harmony and everything.  I gotta say, they are an amazingly talented group of people, and a blessing to work with.

Anyway, when I selected this passage and the music to go with it I was thinking I’d be preaching on doing this new thing - that the winter of our quarantine was ending and a new reality, a fresh beginning, was springing up in its place.  As it became painfully clear that my thinking was definitely wrong, I needed to look at this passage in a different way.  

So I read commentaries on the Song of Solomon, and one of them stated that this book is intended to point singles to patience, married couples to each other, and everyone to Christ.  Although I continued reading, I had to object to that writer’s third point.  This did not point to Christ, because it was written about 950 years before the birth of Christ.  Solomon was not pointing ahead to a future Messiah, but speaking to his present reality.   

It made me think of Timmy.  Timmy was an adorable young boy in the first (and only) Vacation Bible School class I taught.  I was quite surprised to realize that the children and I had very different ideas about what VBS meant.  I thought it was Bible School.  They thought it was Vacation.   We were studying Genesis, and every time I asked about a new character we had read about, like Adam or Abraham - Timmy would always identify the new character as Jesus.  And I’d say something like, No, Timmy, Jesus wasn’t born yet.  This went on all week.  It’s not uncommon for Christians to look back at stories in the Hebrew Bible and say “This is about Jesus,” reading the Hebrew Bible through the lens of the New Testament, instead of the other way around - the way it was actually written.  Without the Old Testament, much of the New would have been completely incomprehensible to the people for whom it was written - Jewish Christ followers in the first Century after the birth of Jesus.  Yet, I know Christians who think we don’t need to know anything about the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, because the New Testament superseded it.  That is not correct.  If we are to understand Jesus, we really do need to study the Hebrew Bible.

To be more nearly accurate, this love song, this rather explicit and sensual song about a couple pretty much besotted with each other, one of whom is clearly a king, would have pointed the reader to God, whose relationship with Israel was often described as a marriage.   Solomon, with his 700 wives and 300 concubines, knew something about the relationship between two people in love.  As king of Israel, and the son of David whom God dearly loved, he also knew something about the relationship between God and God’s people.  He was perfectly situated to write this love song - maybe for the Queen of Sheba, as some commentators think, but certainly for God - with God as the king, the bridegroom and Israel, the bride.

The idea of being in love with God as one might be in love with a spouse, is kind of foreign to our way of thinking.  For us, Protestants in America, any openly sexual conversation is sort of frowned upon in public, and certainly in church.  That would be one of the reasons The Song of Solomon is so rarely preached. It is, if not explicitly sexual, then certainly extremely sensual.   It’s hard to deal with that imagery while keeping the sanctuary “pure.”  We giggle and fidget uncomfortably.   But consider - how might our lives change if we looked at our relationship with God as if we were lovers,  two people desperately in love with each other?  

We are taught to look at God as Father, Lord, Creator, Judge, King - but not as lover.  We think of ourselves as God’s children, servants, subjects, slaves even.  We talk about loving God, and being obedient to God, and being in awe or fearful of God.  We even talk about owing God certain behavior out of gratitude for all the gifts we are blessed with, for all the grace that falls upon us.  But we rarely speak about being in love with God.   What would it be like, I wonder, if we were in love with God?

When we are in love with someone, we want to please them.  We buy them gifts.  We prepare their favorite meals, and bring them chocolate on the tough days.  We do all the little things that make their eyes sparkle.  Not because they expect it of us, not because it is their birthday or our anniversary, or because we owe them somehow.  But because it’s Tuesday.  Because it makes us happy to make them happy. We think about them all the time, so much so that we sort of lose track of whatever it was we were supposed to be doing.   We are so distracted by our love that our friends will tease us.  If you have been in love, you know what that is like.  If you have not yet been in love, you have great joy to look forward to.    And sorrow, because when they hurt, we hurt with them.  We hate to see them unhappy or suffering for any reason.  We would do anything to save them pain, and to make them feel better.  We want to be with them every minute - even if we are introverts and need our alone time.  As long as we know they are right there if we reach out, we’re good.  When we are in love, we talk about being soul mates and two halves of a whole.  We want to create things together - a new life, a home, a family.  When we are in love, we cannot imagine ever separating ourselves from our beloved.  

And it goes both ways . . .all of that, goes both ways.

What if this described our relationship with God?  

And God’s relationship with us? 
What if we were in love, desperately, passionately, in love, with God? 
How would our lives, our behavior, our attitude toward God and life, change?

God does love us that way.  And waits, for the winter rains to bring new life into our hearts, and new love into our lives.  And then, when we are ready to love God as God loves us,

    Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
    bounding over the hills.

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away;

Arise and awake, and come away, with your God, your beloved, 

who loves you, madly, desperately, passionately.  

Always has, and always will.