“Now I know in part; but then
shall I know even as also I am known.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:12b (KJV)
[In heaven] “I shall then
love God even as I am loved by Him.”
— Saint John of the Cross (1542 – 1591)
RECONCILIATION makes its final play in the perpetual transformation
to perfection that fuses itself to our soul instantly when we meet God in glory. That ‘day’ is cosmically incomprehensible.
But that mystery is not
what this article is about. What this is
about is something central to what we cannot experience here, and what we can
only imagine in our mind’s eye.
Saint John of the Cross writes about our “union of the will” — our
love for God, here — in contrast to our possession, to come, in the “union of glory”
— over life’s horizon, beyond reach just now.
That union with God in glory will
bring to us an awareness of His love for us, which will transform our own love
for Him, which will be perfected with light speed immediacy.
We cannot quite know how God loves us. We cannot quite touch it. We can think we know, but we truly have no
idea how much, and to what extent is His love for us, person for person; how
intimately He knows us, and how much more He loves us than we can even love
ourselves. Just the same we cannot love
God the way we probably should, because of the fact we have just considered. But, of course, God knows. He oversees the Program of Life. He is patently aware that we will know in the
end.
If we truly knew how much
God loves us we would love Him back with such a deserving love. But in this life we cannot.
***
One day, God will say to us, “I see that you see what I see. You see what I have seen all your life, your life
which I created. You see the love I have
for every person, to every corner of my creation. And now I see what I knew I would see; you
can love me now the same as I have always loved you.”
God loves us much more than we can ever love ourselves or love
Him, and when we do finally understand that mystery, we will love Him with the perfect
love we ourselves deserve, in Christ, which is the same love with which He has
loved us.
© 2016 Steve Wickham.
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