Passion

Oddly enough, given the plethora of movies about people falling madly in love, most people are terrified of passion. They're afraid to love one person without holding something back just in case, protecting themselves, hedging their bets.

More importantly, they're afraid to love God without holding back.

As Alan Paton says in An Instrument of Thy Peace:

Love is not a sentimental thing, though I have known people calling themselves Christians to disparage it as such. To me most of these people are afraid of love because it might destroy their world.

And passion can destroy your world. Read the Song of Solomon if you're in any doubt:

I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking... I have taken off my robe. Must I put it on again? I have washed my feet--must I soil them again?

My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the lock.

I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart had gone out to him when he spoke. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls!

O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you--if you find my lover, what will you tell him?

Tell him I am faint with love. (5:2-8)

We tend to remember the sensual elements of this book, but the part that always strikes me is the utter seriousness of the longing the woman feels for her beloved. Look again at what she does, once she gives herself over to passion. She runs through the night searching for him. She gets beaten up because she's out late in the public streets and yet she scarcely seems to care. She wants him more than she wants safety. She wants him more than she wants life itself.

It's scary, to consider loving like that.

Though Alan Paton directs his remarks at Christians who hold back, I'm fairly certain that the reason many people bracket off God entirely is because they're afraid of loving him. They're afraid that if they fall for him, head over heels, they might end up like the woman in Song of Solomon--running through the streets, battered and bruised, looking foolish before all the world.

And so they might.

But if the movies we make are any indication, we also know that all-forgetful, self-risking love is worth it, and more than worth it. It's the only thing on this earth that can lift us above fear, above uncertainty, above mundaneity, above aging and suffering and even death itself. Love is divine.

And most divine of all is divine love.