The steadfast and unconditional love of God is more like fluid water, than perhaps hard ice, a rock, an anchor, or some other solid metaphoric substance.
Fluid seeps into cracks. It soaks in and finds its way into unseen and unsealed places. It doesn’t rust, crumble or confine itself to the highest of places.
In the most surprising and scandalous way, God’s love shape-shifts, refusing to separate itself from us.
It can be found in zealots, bigots, and theologians. It can be found in your lover, and your enemy.
It can be found in the poetic extravagance of the living and in the stirring silence of the dead.
This water can feel like guilt-induced weight, or welcome relief from life’s dryness.
Separation from God is an illusion that both sin and religion (of all sorts) support and weaponise.
So much well-meaning religious effort wishes to own and colonise this shape-shifting substance. Codifying it, consolidating it, and making it concrete – easy to grasp, to apply, frame, blame, and explain… even this prose does it no justice.
Today I am reminded that any kind of separation from God I have accepted, believed possible, or conjured in my mind is only that, a belief and a conjuring.
The invitation, for us all, always, is to acknowledge and accept that no thing is so powerful, that it can extract or separate us from this eternal shape-shifting divine substance, ever – because we are held together by this love, even when we feel we are failing or falling apart.
– David Tensen