LOVE'S DEEPEST LONGINGS

Who can you share your innermost thoughts, feelings and fears with? Who can you give your deepest self to with abandon and never regret it? Who can you trust will never be tempted to share your secrets? Who will never betray, deny or sabotage you? Who will love you more than you love yourself…even when you don’t?

We need someone who knows us better than we know ourselves. We need someone who will be more honest than we are willing to be with ourselves, someone who refuses to play the games and who refuses to let us play them either.

Valentine's Day, with its "romantic" love is a beautiful thing. But considering the complexity of the human experience, it's easy to see we need someone who will love us with something deeper and longer lasting.

We need someone who, unlike us, hasn’t honed their human rationalization skills to a razor-sharp edge. We need someone whose first reaction is not to be defensive. We need someone who won’t back away from integrity no matter what the cost—and will lovingly speak the truth about our own lack thereof. We need someone who won’t justify our egocentric approach to everything and everyone. We need someone who isn’t living in constant denial of the realities right in front of us. We need someone who will help us see what we can’t see with our own limited vision, be it physical or spiritual. We need someone who will help us see that we are worthy of receiving love and are worthy of giving love.

In other words, we need someone who will help us see that we're each as beautiful and lovely as a rose...but we're not the only bloom on the bush.

That someone is God.

“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.” (Psalm 42:1 NRSV)