God (Christianity) -- Worship and love; Spirituality
"When all my endeavour is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavour
is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention,
nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because Thou dost enfold me
with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone
because Thou, who art Love's self hast turned Thee toward me alone. And
what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome
sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?"[1] So wrote Nicholas of Cusa four
hundred years ago.
I should like to say more about this old man of God. He is not much
known today anywhere among Christian believers, and among current
Fundamentalists he is known not at all. I feel that we could gain much
from a little acquaintance with men of his spiritual flavor and the
school of Christian thought which they represent. Christian literature,
to be accepted and approved by the evangelical leaders of our times,
must follow very closely the same train of thought, a kind of "party
line" from which it is scarcely safe to depart. A half-century of this
in America has made us smug and content. We imitate each other with
slavish devotion and our most strenuous efforts are put forth to try to
say the same thing that everyone around us is saying--and yet to find an
excuse for saying it, some little safe variation on the approved theme
or, if no more, at least a new illustration.
Nicholas was a true follower of Christ, a lover of the Lord, radiant and
shining in his devotion to the Person of Jesus. His theology was
orthodox, but fragrant and sweet as everything about Jesus might
properly be expected to be. His conception of eternal life, for
instance, is beautiful in itself and, if I mistake not, is nearer in
spirit to John 17:3 than that which is current among us today. Life
eternal, says Nicholas, is "nought other than that blessed regard
wherewith Thou never ceasest to behold me, yea, even the secret places
of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly to
impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by
love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle
my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness,
and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to
make it increase and endure."[2]
Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but
the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then
it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do. It would
be like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within the
range of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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