"Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy... For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected--not in itself, but in the object... Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire."
-George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, "The Consuming Fire"
Inexorable. Unmovable, unpersuadable, unyielding. Is it true that "nothing is inexorable but love"? The foundations my feet have walked seem very strong. The rocks that line the rocky shores of this coastal path, my hand cannot break. Yet, Mam Tor is eroding. It is the shivering mountain that it is named. The rocks my hands pick up are changed over time, even if I cannot see it. If change happens to such seemingly steadfast things as these, what else may move?
A friend I used to call on for help is no longer there, the patience I try so hard to keep I no longer bear, an argument laid out so clearly bumps my faith for even a breath. Yes, these intangible virtues and graces in me are shivering, too.
"Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor" because my prayers are imperfect and poor. I have tried to move love before, in pursuit of something that I think good. Praise God, his love is not an alloy. It is truly good, he is
the true good. His love is that which purifies me, even if I need to be walked through a fire every now and then. Why does he love me? It is such hard work! It's not as if I walk through those fires very willingly - they burn, after all. Yet, on the other side I am brought closer to the One who walks me through. His fire destroys that which keeps me from him, and I am made beautiful. In his image.
God loves the love that he created me to have for him, with which I praise, serve, honor, and bless him. I do not know why he created me and sustains me to receive and return his love, but I have joy because he did and does. It is the season of Lent, a time of preparation to celebrate the greatest act of love ever shown. This one inexorable thing deserves our attention and commitment. The purifying fires do not last forever, but they allow us to live fully and eternally in a perfected state. Let us let our own alloys burn and fall away so that we may be purified.
It has been a wonderful past two weeks since I last posted, during which I made pretzels with some fine people, mountain biked in Stirling with the cycling club, worked on essays, got a glimpse of spring (!!!!), and other fun things. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and only two weeks of class are left before Spring Break! Time is flying.
For your viewing pleasure, in celebration of love and beauty:
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I'll never eat another Auntie Anne's.
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| Best pretzel-maker-helpers ever! |
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| Beautiful lady. |
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| Riding bikes at Dumyat in Stirling |
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| Going up, up, up... |
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| And down, down, down! |
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| These people are wonderful to ride with. |
Love frozen in the flowers.
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| Coastal path run |
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| Love me some Fife! |
Do you think that the statement "Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor" applies to romantic love as well?
ReplyDeleteYes, and I think that romantic love is probably the love that most yields to imperfect prayer. (I say "imperfect prayer" because there have been prayers that God yields to, while his love is neither imperfect nor poor. I'm thinking of Exodus 32 here.)
DeleteThe reason for yielding to an imperfect prayer may be to please the beloved, but if the lover is tending more to the beloved than to God, or not tending to the beloved for God's sake, or ignoring who/what the beloved is created to be, then it is an imperfect love. Happy to hear your thoughts in response!
Hahaha, I am still having trouble processing the literal meaning of the statement. I think I need to know exactly who is doing the loving and the praying according to George. :)
ReplyDeleteSo, could you understand this sentence to mean something like "God's love (which is perfect), will not yield to the (imperfect) requests of man because He loves him so much"?
Or uh... "Active, thriving, doing love that stops doing its loving deeds and turns into just a prayer routine is poor and imperfect"?
Or more along the lines of my first stab at it, "Love which gives into the requests of the beloved (at the expense of the beloved) is poor and imperfect"?
For some reason, this sentence seems simultaneously vitally important to my existence and incredibly mysterious and difficult to sort out.
Well now that you say it's vitally important to your very existence, I feel very inadequate in answering! Even so, I would say that your first interpretation is probably closest to what MacDonald meant. Your second interpretation is very interesting, and I think you have a good point to follow up on even if that's a different way to read it. And yes, I think your third interpretation also deserves credibility if you put his sentence in a romantic context.
DeleteOhhhhh. Daaaaas gooooooo. (Do NOT expect an intellectual response from me.) I will now use a dictionary to figure this thing out and think about it. Keep writing, my love! Keep writing! Love you.
ReplyDelete