God's Love

Abecedarius Rex wrote a post about Emily Dicken's poem "I'm Nobody, Who Are You?", but something about what he said left me longing (here's why). Maybe I'm still a rosy eyed youth (i'm not too much farther along than those sophomores), but I think life can be beautiful. There is a God, and He loves us! But that's horribly difficult to say and be taken seriously. My early religious education consisted of "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" and bewilderment at the shear number of Snickers and banana shaped runts that were in heaven, and I don't think I'm in the minority. You pull the "Jesus loves you" line and it all seems very childish, but that's because nobody bothers to tell you that Jesus loves a sinner!

That's when God's love start to mean things, and that's what Mr. Rex gets exactly right: Jesus loves a sinner. He describes our state as a "vast, abyssal darkness... a gulf so profound and terrifying that it is difficult to express it to anyone else lest they think of you as a freak". Makes sense then that we can't hope for any happiness to arise out of self-reflection, because we really are the nobodies that he articulates. Yet we can find happiness in God. Life isn't "an exile on the blasted plain which is cold, alone, and desperate", because we have God, who's infinite warmth and consolation never leaves us!

There is another step after realizing where it ain't at, and that is realizing where it is at.
Atheism allows man nothing more than Mr. Rex's description of man. What they really do is stop at their own worthlessness. The only reason they can gulp down that prospect is that most deny their own worthlessness. That's foolish, but we can't see through ourselves and stop either; the whole point of seeing through our own existence is to see God.

There are no miserable saints!