This quote in Abba's Child by Brennan Manning just struck me today. It is in regards to John 13:23-25 in which John is noted as the disciple who was reclining against Jesus and being one "whom Jesus loved". It is an intimate picture of a close relationship. There are no physical boundaries. John is totally comfortable and at home with his Lord.
"To risk the passionate life, we must be "affected by" Jesus as John was; we must engage His experience with our lives rather than with our memories. Until I lay my head on Jesus' breast, listen to His heartbeat, and personally appropriate the Christ-experience of John's eye-witness. I have only a derivative spirituality. My cunning impostor will borrow John's moment of intimacy and attempt to convey it as if it were my own."
In the past few years I've developed some wonderful friendships and relationships in which I feel so comfortable and loved that I can lean against those people physically and rest in their love for me. I adore that feeling. But I remember that it was not natural for me to be this close at first. I had to consciously open myself up to be close to those people. That intimacy and closeness is based and rooted in love and trust. We draw reassurance and a feeling of being "at home" in those moments. This is what Christ wants with us. To have us lean against his chest and arms and just feel wrapped in His love and centered in the trust we can place in Him.
What keeps us from this intimacy?
1 comment:
These beautiful descriptions of intimacy are what I want.
Which of course prompts your last question: If all of the furious winds of Divine Will are bent on it, if we see that it's what we want most of all, then what indeed is keeping us from this intimacy?
I'll be thinking about this...
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