We all know only too well the restlessness of our own hearts. We are so often tortured by worries, filled with fears, driven by acquisitive desires, or burdened with unresolved anger. As a result, our attitudes are clouded by our emotions, and “we see the world darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12). As Paul tells us, we don’t see things clearly because we are looking through foggy lenses. In a world full of self-centered philosophies, reality has been reduced to the narrowest of boundaries: our own heads (egos) and our own feelings. As a result, we are filled with contradictions, confusion, and angst about who we are and why we are here.
The rest of this verse from First Corinthians goes on to say, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly; but THEN we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; but THEN I will know fully, even as I have been fully known”. What does this word, “THEN,” mean? Now, we wander in a dark wood of illusions as the result of our collective human sinfulness, which has darkened our intellects. Our Christian faith, though, tells us that we are more than our bodies or our minds or our feelings alone. We are also made of greater stuff, having been made in the very image and likeness of God. Because we are human and alive, we recognize that our reality is shaped by our experiences, the good and the bad. Augustine understood the power of human experience. In his book, “Confessions”, he does an excellent job of revealing the human realities of sinful experiences, but that we can also find and experience the rest that our hearts desire, in and through our own experiences of God. That “THEN” begins with these experiences of God.
For Augustine, our experiences can be windows providing an opening to God’s presence in our lives. Indeed, he says that it is uniquely through human experience that we find God. Augustine’s own experiences opened the door to his heart and mind and turned his gaze away from his self-centered seeking of happiness in things and in pleasures of both mind and body. His own experience of God’s love within him and for him led him out of himself into a deep sense of solidarity with the rest of humanity. This is the piece of human experience that is so often missing today in our highly individualistic, fast-paced, competitive, me-or-us-against-them environments that we live in. In a world that reduces happiness to the selfish acquisition of things, to the transitory and fleeting satisfaction of personal feelings or immediate pleasures; in a world that thinks and believes that if ‘I feel ok’ nothing else matters, what else could we be but restless? The component that is missing in all of this restlessness is love. Well, Paul has a lot to say about love in the verses that lead up to verse 12.
He writes, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13: 1-3). He then goes on to reveal the nature of the love he is talking about. Its qualities include: patience and kindness, it is humble and never boastful or arrogant, it is not irritable or resentful, and it takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth about things. Paul reveals, too, that this love is capable of enduring all things and, more importantly, that this love never ends (vs. 4-7). Could it be that this missing component of love is the real reason why we are so filled with confusion about who we are and why we are here? What more can we know about this love?
The Apostle John gives us a profound insight into this when he writes, “…everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is Love” (1 Jn. 4: 7-8). What more empowering, liberating, joyful experience do we desire as human beings than to love and to know the love of another? But we are capable of experiencing an even deeper love, too. We can experience the intimate, personal love of God. But in order to have this experience of divine love, we have to find ways to break out of the chaos of noise and distractions that surround our every waking moment in this world. This is where the daily practice of prayer in solitude and silence comes in. We may not possess the power to end the chaos around us, but we do have the power to choose to step out of it for a time. We can take ourselves apart from it, to be quiet enough, alone enough, to experience this God Who Is Love itself, who waits with infinite patience for us to enter into the quiet center of our own heart to be with him, even for just a few moments. This is no abstract, distant God. We walk in his presence at all times. We just need to open our eyes.
When we come to experience the intensity of God’s love within us, our hearts finally find the rest they have sought all along. When this happens, our focus, like Augustine’s, will turn outward. Why? Because real love is a living reality, a robust action, a self-giving freedom that is far beyond any merely romantic idea or any fleeting feeling. This experience of divine love gives us a truly liberating and empowering freedom, that is, a selfless ‘freedom for’, rather than the self-centered ‘freedom from’ that the world demands.
It is this experience of the divine love of God that puts our own hearts at rest. This experience makes us free to respond willingly and joyfully to the needs of others. It is this experience of love that moves us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and the imprisoned, to see a neighbor even in the poorest, most unattractive among us, that enables us to welcome the stranger and the alien among us, and even to love our enemies. It is this love that enables us to recognize all others, not just as abstract fellow human beings, but as our true brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the paradox of God’s wisdom. It is through this relationship, this human experience of God’s love, that we find the freedom to love others openly and sacrificially, even in the midst of suffering, just as Jesus did. It is this divine kind of love that is the only power that can make the world better. It is this human experience of love, this relational experience with God, that enables our hearts to be at rest even in the toughest of times. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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