Many of my childhood memories involve being at my grandparent's cabin on Lake Lure in North Carolina. Lake Lure is a beautiful lake, nestled in the Appalachians, and thus, naturally, has its fair share of traps for unwitting tourists. One such trap is the bottomless pools. Artfully decrepit signs lure in curious travelers to see one of "the (I suppose unofficial?) seven wonders of the world." After winding down a long shady gravel drive, visitors find a pretty, yet unremarkable spring-fed pool. One sign details how "the bottom has never been found" while another reads "Bottomless pools, no wading." This second sign has been the butt of countless family jokes. After all, is it not logically impossible to wade in a bottomless pool? Do they expect foolish visitors to slip off their shoes to wade in the "bottomless pool" and unwittingly sink into the endless black oblivion? It really is rather comical.
The Bottomless Pools have been closed for years now, and I've never given them much thought, other than as an overused family joke, at least until today. I have been thinking a lot about intimacy with God lately. It is something I crave -- something I have had at many points in my life, but also something I have lacked at others. This past school year at Samford, my relationship with the Lord was characterized by distance and questions, not intimacy, but over the past six months or so, I have once again found myself going deeper with the Lord.
This evening, I was sitting on my front porch, just enjoying resting in God's presence and thanking Him for the way he has drawn near to me in the past few months. The words of one of my favorite United Pursuit Band songs ran through my head as I prayed, "Your love is sweeter than honey, your love is stronger than death, your love rids me of my burdens, teaches me to dance!" It was such a joy to dwell on these words and feel in the depths of my soul that they are true. The love of my heavenly Father, is indeed sweeter than anything this world has to offer, more satisfying than anything else in the universe. In the words of the Psalmist:
"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. "
"I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
The Bottomless Pools have been closed for years now, and I've never given them much thought, other than as an overused family joke, at least until today. I have been thinking a lot about intimacy with God lately. It is something I crave -- something I have had at many points in my life, but also something I have lacked at others. This past school year at Samford, my relationship with the Lord was characterized by distance and questions, not intimacy, but over the past six months or so, I have once again found myself going deeper with the Lord.
This evening, I was sitting on my front porch, just enjoying resting in God's presence and thanking Him for the way he has drawn near to me in the past few months. The words of one of my favorite United Pursuit Band songs ran through my head as I prayed, "Your love is sweeter than honey, your love is stronger than death, your love rids me of my burdens, teaches me to dance!" It was such a joy to dwell on these words and feel in the depths of my soul that they are true. The love of my heavenly Father, is indeed sweeter than anything this world has to offer, more satisfying than anything else in the universe. In the words of the Psalmist:
"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. "
Yet in the Lord we are not left thirsty! For...
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips."
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips."
Psalm 63
Truly, to know the steadfast love of the Lord, to delight in His faithfulness, to know the intimacy of His presence, is the most satisfying thing we can experience as His beloved children. However, as I look around me and into my own heart, I would not characterize us as a people of delight. Perhaps we honor God as our King, our Savior, our Lord, perhaps we worship Him in awe of His power and might, perhaps we even love Him ferociously as our Savior. But do we love, desire and cherish Him as our bridegroom, our pursuer, the one who holds our hearts in His loving hands?
I, for one, am guilty of loving God from a distance. I hold Him as Lord of my life, revere Him as creator and King of the universe, but when it comes to the most intimate parts of my heart, I soetimes shut Him out along with everyone else. It's insane really. If we can trust God to hold the universe together, shouldn't we trust him enough to acknowledge that he holds hold our hearts -- trust Him enough to share with Him the deep, dirty bareness of our souls that thirst for His life-giving touch?
We treat God like an awkward high school prom date. We'll go with him because we don't have any other options, we appreciate what he's done for us, and we desire the benefits of being with him, but we don't really care much about him. We hold him at a distance, stumbling through a painful dance because we don't know him, or even want to know him.
God is calling us to so much more! he is calling us to intimacy, to deep, abiding, soul-feeding relationship. He loves us beyond measure and pursues our hearts with no restraint. He desires us, he delights is us, and he longs for us to delight in Him.
So back to the bottomless pools. Today as I sat before the Lord, it struck me that His love is a bottomless pool. (Cheesy metaphor? yes. Joyously true? yes.) And while we can mock the tourist sign that demands "no wading," we do so hypocritically, for wading is exactly what we try do in our relationship with God. We wonder, "How shallow can I stay and it be deep enough?" The problem is, wading in God's love is impossible. Once you enter into relationship with Him, there are no boundaries. We cannot cling with our toes to some footing in our fleshly natures, we cannot surrender our bodies to new life while holding our heads above water to breathe the air of sin and death. God's love is engulfing, overwhelming, and radically transforming. It is never ending, for we cannot reach the bottom. He is calling us ever deeper: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away." (S.O.S. 2:10) The Lord is calling us to learn the depths of His love. Why do we harden our hearts, even as he whispers, "respond."
