how vast beyond all measure

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down...
(Isaiah 64:1)

In Ulysses, James Joyce writes "Love loves to love Love." And it's true - there is something cyclical about love, isn't there? It always wants more, it loves even the thought of itself, desires more of that feeling of not getting enough, or of needing to deeply know what it loves in every possible way.

When you love someone, you want to spend time with them and discover everything about them. It's like there is no end to it, either - everything is fascinating. It's been striking me lately, how absurdly wonderful love for the Lord is...because it can never be fully satisfied. There is always more to know. He is endless and incredible, and to love Him is to never get enough and to get more than enough all at once. He satisfies me fully, and yet I can never fill up on everything there is to know about Him or how He loves me, because there is just too much of all of that.

I've decided that it's that whole Joyce-thing, the Love loving Love, that creates something beautiful out of poverty. In those places of emptiness is an urgency for redemption, an urgency to know the Lord more, to love Him more, and to be loved by Him more. Love becomes a necessity, because it's the only hope when everything else is gone. When you reach the end of yourself and say "I have nothing else to give", there is every opportunity to say "Lord, give me everything you are. I want it and I need it, desperately".

The glory of that possibility really is beautiful to me: living solely on a thirsty love for God.

I spent a weekend leading some remarkable high school girls at a Young Life camp and was convinced even further that being in love is necessity, not luxury. We crave it, innately - crave being taken care of, crave someone knowing every little detail about us, crave a hiding place, crave a sheltering embrace, crave someone to pick up our pieces and show us how to be who we are. We were not meant to survive without it. It's a joyful thing, watching someone taste love like that, watch them take sips of something that is constantly falling for itself. It can't get enough.

That's the gorgeous thing about it, when you are in love, and your prayer again and again is Lord, tear open the heavens and come down, be close to me....it's gorgeous because you won't ever have to stop praying it, because He always has something more to give.

He loves to love.