Poet Needed

In the movie, Contact, Jodie Foster plays a scientist who is whisked away to another planet after a special spaceship was built with blueprints provided by extra-terrestrials. In the scene where she makes contact with the space aliens, she is carried through one space wormhole after another until she finds herself standing beside a beautiful ocean on the planet to which they have carried her.

The beach where she stands is an awesome and beautiful place. In her first moments in this otherworldly paradise, she gasps with amazement while tears of joy stream down her cheeks. Up until this point she has tried to document her journey in scientific terms for her fellow academicians who selected her to make the trip. She has studied it through the lens of a scholar. But now, as she tries to take it all in, her scientific paradigm fails her. She stands riveted in one spot, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all, and simply whispers through tears of joy, “They should have sent a poet.”

“They should have sent a poet." So it is with the love of God. Theologians can’t describe Him. Books can’t contain Him. Sermons and songs don’t do Him justice. His love is immeasurable, immutable, and irrevocable. Being supernatural, His love can’t be understood by natural minds or natural means. It overflows the bounds of human experience and defies adequate explanation. A chimpanzee could sooner teach molecular biology than a man can do justice to explaining the scope of God’s love.

Divine love makes no sense to the natural mind. It so drastically transcends the pallid experience that man calls love that it almost seems a violation of the word for humans to use it. His love outpaces human love to the point of absurdity when judged by common man using common sense.

Divine love passionately ravages the senses of God’s chosen ones and leaves us absolutely breathlessly in love with Him. Let those of us who have an ear to hear, listen, as He whispers sweet affirmations in a hundred ways every day. Let us open our eyes and see the beauty of His presence in every detail of your life. Let’s taste and see that the Lord is good in the countless way He reveals His love to us. May we feel the gentle touch of His loving hand in the places where we hurt. And smell His sweet fragrance as He holds us in His arms and swears that He will never let us go, even for a moment.

I want to allow the greatness of His love to engulf me. I don’t want to resist it. I want the finite experiences of my life be swallowed up by infinite love. I want to take my eyes off my circumstances and look at Him. I want to stop worrying about tomorrow and look at Him. I want to turn away from regrets about the past and look at Him. Those things that distract me, disturb me, dilute me . . . I want to turn away from it all and look at Him. As I reflect on his love, only one question comes to mind – where’s a good poet when you need one?

(I posted this blog a few years ago but decided to rerun it now.)