A Taste of Love Divine

Bidden by love to enter

Surrender: Knowing, certainty, piety;

Release all claim to my frame: Abandon secure assertions,

I open my soul to love Divine –

Welcome the warmth that can only be God.

(For He is a consuming fire)

‘That He loves me,’ is something I know –

I can hold it, define it, manage it, contain it,

As if it were some tame, sentimental ornament to adorn my life.

He speaks to my soul and tells me, “My love is beyond knowing…

It is only to be felt in the depths,

It cannot be known or it would cease to be holy other.

I invite you to a new kind of knowing,

As the beloved disciple spoke of it:

‘We have come to know and rely on the love of God.’

You see, there is no real knowing of my love

Without total reliance on it.”

And my heart is turned: I had it all wrong.

No, I cannot hold, define, manage, or contain the love of God,

Any more than the blazing sun can be gift-wrapped and held in my pocket.

For He is a consuming fire.

It is known in single moments – seconds even – for mercy’s sake:

A full-fledged unveiling of divine love would render the sinner mute

The conscious-mind numbed; The wrestling soul stilled;

The exuberant abased; The hopeful in awe –

In essence, the body would perhaps explode

From the overwhelm

Of what truly the love of God is.

Scholars can ponder, Poets can muse

Choirs can proclaim –

All creation can overflow; and still

The Love of God cannot be held, managed, explained or understood.

My words get in the way

When all I want is to run headlong into the love of God –

Forgetting all I know of Him to be immersed in Him –

In Christ

There is no other place for me.

‘Many waters cannot quench love,

Neither can the floods drown it.’

Baptize me in this flood of Your love,

Jesus, Lover of my soul, Consuming Fire,

Love Divine, All loves excelling.