If you’ve ever fallen in love then you’ll be familiar with the symptoms – sleepless nights, butterflies in the tummy, the big grin that appears on your face when you think of ‘that’ person, and the joy of knowing that someone else thinks you’re precious and special. It’s what our souls long for and when we find it our hearts soar.
When we think about being ‘in love’ with God it’s all too easy to import these romantic ideas, but nothing could be further from the truth. When two people fall in love they both need, and have the capacity to give, love to each other. But when we are in love with God He needs nothing from us. He is the all sufficient source of love. To be in love with God is rather like a sponge being immersed in water – the water soaks into every part of the sponge until there is as much water as there is sponge. So too to be ‘in love with God’ is to be ‘in God’, until His presence so infuses every fibre of our being that love becomes the defining characteristic of who we are.
Truly it is only when we are ‘in God’s love’ that it becomes possible to be in love with another human being at all.
