The Lover's Smile

How do we come to realize the beauty of the Spiritual Life?

How do you explain to a little girl what a beautiful dancer she could become if she has no idea what a ballerina is? How do we begin to give less importance to the development of our figures than to our souls if we are blind to spiritual realities? Yes, in short, how do we wake up to God’s love for us?

Love for God is a difficult thing. It’s a life-long project. Often God remains imperceptible because we don’t know where and how to look. We know his existence and love for us, it seems, by faith alone. We are, as it were, asleep.

I was pondering these things, and this prayer flowed from my pen:

What love you have shown me all these years, O Lord! Your interest in me lately has not so much changed, and yet I have begun to notice it more. As if your unconditional love is suddenly flowing around me everywhere on this my earthly flight. Not that your love just hit me, rather I just realized it was there. Have I been flying too fast? Have the music and the air-conditioning robbed my attention since they please my senses more even though they are not important?

Your love is not simply like an object bouncing off my window which suddenly catches my attention, but your love is EVERYWHERE, more like the very wind which flows all around me, and which keeps my plane hovering on its flight. I can hear the wind, I could feel it if I were to hold out my fingers, but I cannot see it. Like your love for me—your presence around me—I see you not; and yet there are so many signs which show you are there, and that you care.

Why then do I care more about the music, which pleases my ears? Or the AC, which pleases my sense of feeling, both of which I also cannot see? It’s not just a matter of perspective, is it? How come I can perceive you in many little ways, but still don’t really pay attention to you. Am I just seeking my own pleasure?

Your love is not unlike a lover’s beauty which is only “seen” once they smile at me—and yet Lord, have you not been smiling at me, all these years?



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