Do we recognize how much we need God’s love in our life, or put a different way, how much do we desire that love that only God can fulfill? Our lives are so busy, we tend to just push away this desire or we may not even think about it at all. But even when we do contemplate God’s love, we can only express it in terms that a limited human mind can do (like below), in terms of things that are familiar, but it’s so much more than that.
I came across a familiar poem today that expressed, in worldly terms, how much one can desire the love of another, and it reminded me more of whether we desire God at least like this, or is it only this powerfully expressed for the things of this world? If we can express worldly love “like the hot needs the sun, like honey on her tongue, like oxygen, I need your love”, how much greater is the love God has for us? Without the desire for God’s love, and for His Glory, we are just about in the same shape as my widow pictured above, broken.
I have gone over the words below about twenty times now, it’s pretty powerful (even more when put to music), but how much more should we desire God’s love… probably more than we need to take our next breath.
I Need Your Love
Like a desert needs rain
Like a town needs a name
I need your love
Like a drifter needs a room
Hawkmoon
I need your loveLike a rhythm unbroken
Like drums in the night
Like sweet soul music
Like sunlight
I need your loveLike coming home
And you don’t know where you’ve been
Like black coffee
Like nicotine
I need your love (I need your love)When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your loveLike a Phoenix rising needs a holy tree
Like the sweet revenge of a bitter enemy
I need your loveLike the hot needs the sun
Like honey on her tongue
Like the muzzle of a gun
Like oxygen
I need your love (I need your love)When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your loveLike thunder needs rain
Like a preacher needs pain
Like tongues of flame
Like a sheet stained
I need your loveLike a needle needs a vein
Like someone to blame
Like a thought unchained
Like a runaway train
I need your loveLike faith needs a doubt
Like a freeway out
I need your loveLike powder needs a spark
Like lies need the dark
I need your loveI need all the love in your heart… and I need all the love in your heart…
~ Hawkmoon 269, U2
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I am continually amazed at what boxes we tend to put God in over and over again. I am reading this amazing book called Chasing Francis by Cron about Francis of Assisi and it has been a true eye opener to see how many different places Francis found God that we (I) have disregarded in our sophisticated and technologically advanced society today. The box we put God in on Sunday mornings is a way for us to make sure we don’t experience God’s fullness through the rest of the week.
A few days ago I read this passage and thought about the different ways we think God can or can’t talk to us. It has to be the right location, the right time, place, attitude, do’s or don’ts, with or without’s, but those are limits we put on God, not the other way around.
A few years ago I went to a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, just three months after 9/11. Most of us in the arena that night probably knew someone who’d died in the Twin Towers; we’d lost three people in our church alone. I’ll never forget the end of the concert. As the band played the song “Walk On,” [lyrics] the names of all those who had died were projected onto the arena walls and slowly scrolled up over us, and then up toward the ceiling. At that moment the presence of God descended on that room in a way I will never forget. There we were, twenty-five thousand people standing, weeping, and singing with the band. It suddenly became a worship service; we were pushing against the darkness together. I walked out dazed, asking myself, “What on earth just happened?’ Of course, it was the music. For a brief moment, the veil between this world and the world to come had been made thin by melody and lyric. If only for a brief few minutes, we were all believers.
We may look and listen for God in the “normal” places, but He is present in His creation… birds, music, paintings, literature. Maybe we don’t hear God outside of Sunday morning “church” because we aren’t looking at his entire creation.
