To what shall we compare the love of God? What is it like to dwell in relationship with the Lord?
These are questions we face each time we approach the Lord in prayer. The Christian faith offers us several different images for relating to God. On one hand, we are invited into a filial relationship as beloved son or daughter, with the Father. At other times we are called into friendship with Him, as when Jesus tells His apostles that he no longer calls them servants “but friends.” Beyond that we discover the intimate spousal relationship described in Song of Songs and other parts of the Bible.
Supernatural Life
Yet what if mixed in with these ways of relating to the Lord, there is an even richer and more dynamic layer at work?
Today’s reading from Hosea draws us into an icon of God’s love which brims over with life-giving power. It sings of the one God who seeks us not simply as father to child or groom to his bride, but who permeates us with supernatural life in the way that water brings forth life from the earth. As we read of the Lord’s call to his people, we discover a love that exceeds the embrace of the father, or even nuptial intimacy; it promises the flow and plenitude of life.
Let the imagery soak your interior silence. Consider, for example, the beginning lines of the chapter, in which the Lord declares, “I will be like the dew to Israel.” Just as drops of morning dew adorn the grass and refresh the earth, so too God comes to us in prayer with mysterious touches of grace, awakening us to life.
Imagery of Life
The passage continues with more images of the burgeoning of life. We read that when Israel, when it returns to the Lord, “shall blossom like the lily,” and “his shoots shall spread out…His beauty shall be like the olive,” and “he shall flourish like the grain.” Let us allow ourselves to open up to this vision of exuberant life. The Lord not only calls us but comes to us with great longing, and His embrace infuses us with new life.
Put simply, our love affair with the Lord pours a new stream of life in us. When we return to Him, He breathes His life into us from the inside. Something in us germinates and breaks forth into fresh flowering; and we begin to partake of the divine life.
Return to Me
It turns out that God invites us into a reality that exceeds any single mode of being or relating, but weaves and mingles many of them together, so that we come to love Him more richly. Like a prism that refracts light into numerous colors, so too life with the Lord pulses with different ways of loving. Through all of them, though, we hear the same stirring call: Return to me!
Today’s chapter from Hosea abounds in the imagery of life and flourishing: dewfall, blossoms, olive and grain. Choose what strikes you and take it to prayer. Listen, too, to the Lord’s offering of Himself in the final lines. With longing He asks us, “What have I to do with idols?” For He is the one who gives life, the cypress tree through whom we bear fruit. We dwell not merely next to or near Him, but in Him. Every time we feel our heart drifting, whether in the course of a year or a single day, let us return our gaze to the one who breathes His life into us.
