“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6
Deep calls to deep… Is there a hunger stirring deep within? A longing for the deeper places of God? Our hearts awaken as they resonate with His heart, His longing evokes our longing. Even before we know how to respond, He’s already calling, inviting, drawing us in. God’s love precedes and awakens our soul to love; “The more it drinks, the more it thirsts.”[1]
He is mighty waterfalls and raging oceans. He is within all of creation and beyond creation–our hearts expand to receive Him; we are fashioned for union, for saturation and ever-deepening immersion in His love. The infinite depths of God are calling to the infinite capacity He has placed within each one of us. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa observed that because God is infinite, there is never an end to knowing, loving, or participating in Him. Eternity is not static; it is an endless journey into the inexhaustible depths of God’s love. Even Paul struggled to find language for his encounter with Love’s mystery. He could only speak of its “length and width and height and depth”[2]—dimensions that cross beyond every created horizon into infinitude.
God is the substance of love; His love is the deepest reality of all. He is nearer than we imagine and His compassion reaches far beyond our fears. Beneath all of our desires for success, security, love, recognition and knowledge, lies a deeper certainty, a deeper desire, an underground river, a deep hunger–a longing for God. Thomas Merton writes, “At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness, untouched by sin or illusion, a point of pure truth.” For He has placed eternity in our hearts; there remains a seed, a remnant, albeit a distant memory, an echo, a quiet yet certain resonance–deep is calling to deep–come drink from the waterfalls…
Julian of Norwich, the 14th century author of ‘Revelations of Divine Love,’ asked for an insatiable hunger for God, an unbearable longing. She prayed for such an intense desire for God that nothing else could satisfy her and received unparalleled visions of God’s heavenly nature and reality. This same inexpressible longing is but a reflection of God’s much greater longing for each one of us–He is Origin, He is Source, He is Beginning, He is Foundation, He is Initiator, He is Lover. However great our longing, His longing is exponentially greater.
The soul longs because it has first been loved; our desire is awakened by the One who first desires us. In one of her most beautiful insights Julian writes: “The longing and the desire of us lasts, and always shall, until we see Him in Truth.” There is only One resolution to our hunger, only one satisfaction. St. Augustine writes in Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Psalm 42, ‘my soul pants for you,’ Psalm 63, ‘my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you…’ The image of God within us, that which remains truly a reflection of His nature, is calling out in response to His call. All that is needed is a seed–a tiny mustard seed of longing. A mother cat calls to her kittens because they already belong to her. Her cry is not to establish a relationship but to awaken their hearts and gather them. The kittens answer because they recognise her voice.[3] Their cry is both a response to her call and an expression of their own longing; ‘Deep calling to deep…’
Julian writes further, “The Trinity is our Maker, the Trinity is our Keeper, the Trinity is our everlasting Lover, the Trinity is our endless joy and bliss… we are all enclosed in God, and God is enclosed in us…” The deepest part of your soul already knows the voice of the One from whom it came–like a child hearing its mother’s voice in the womb, we heard His tender longing when he carried us in the womb of His heart before the dawn of creation. The longing you feel for God is itself a sign of grace and evidence that God’s longing for you is already drawing you in. Even the grace to desire Him is grace. There is a holy dissatisfaction with separation, a longing seeded within us for ever-deepening union with God. That seed, watered with gentle affection, swells within, bearing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold—the wound of love, the yeast that spreads through the whole loaf. In Jesus, the depth of God’s own longing is so powerful that it takes flesh; the One who calls us home becomes our living invitation and our pathway.
In the Beatitude, righteousness (dikaiosyne) is much more than obsolete Victorian values, so much more than unobtainable moral perfection. It is to be alive in God’s aliveness, participating in His life and His goodness. It is the life of God poured into the frailty of our human frame; the treasure held within clay vessels; it is to be rooted and established in perfect love…[4]
“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except a man’s spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” 1 Cor 2:10-11.
To speak of the spirit is in one breath to speak of the heart;
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow…” Ezekiel 36:26-27.
Cynthea Bourgeault writes that the heart is an instrument of alignment with God–our radio receiver and responder, our tuning fork, the point of connection and harmony with God’s own nature. Indeed, our hearts are both the instrument of alignment and also the pathway of transformation. As hearts are continually converted by His loving, our behaviour and perceptions are naturally transformed from within. The aligned heart inherently reflects God’s own love and life. In the 7th century, Isaac the Syrian wrote that as the heart becomes aligned, it naturally expands in compassion and “burns with love for the whole of creation.” To experience this, is for His heart to awaken ours. Becoming alive in God’s own aliveness is the awakening of the human heart to participation in the divine (theosis).[5] One writer comments, “the point at which we stop trying to grasp God is to allow ourselves to be grasped by God.” Alignment is not an act of the will or a decision initiated in the mind; it is a heart-posture of surrender, a heart continually yielding to Love.
Our pilgrimage into God’s own life is not about learning but about unlearning. The anonymous author of the classic, “The Cloud of Unknowing” writes that God is not reached by thinking but by ‘naked intent’ or the loving movement of the heart. Love, rather than intellect, unites the soul with God. Christianity is to fall in love; to relinquish control and fall into love. To retire from our own effort is to lie down and be found in green pastures; it is to journey in peace beside still waters–it is soul restoration. To be baptized into love is to embrace harmony with God’s own heart–it is spirit to Spirit, heart to Heart alignment with the Truth, and Truth is a person, a community of Love.
How does one enter into harmony and alignment with God’s own heart and life? He is known by the heart before being understood by the mind. The intellect can only describe what the awakened heart is already encountering. He searches the depths of our hearts with His love and we struggle to find words vast enough to express the treasure received. The deepest realities are first downloaded into the heart before they can ever be articulated. Our hearts are the instrument of alignment and the doorway into God’s own aliveness.
What does it look like to allow our hearts to live in union, in harmony—not only with God’s own heart, but also with humanity in each person’s uniqueness? And what about the whole creation, which groans with longing for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed?[6] It is caught, not taught. So, you might like to take a quiet moment. Sit back, relax, turn up the volume and CLICK HERE to experience a beautiful rendition of The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’ by the Stellenbosch University Choir–a visual and aural glimpse into the beauty of our hearts united as one in His song and conducted by His love; together, alive in His aliveness; each voice fully and uniquely itself, yet together breaking forth as one.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
PS. Stellenbosch University Choir’s rendition of ‘Fly to Paradise’ is also amazing! CLICK HERE
[1] The Wound of Love–Bernard of Clairvaux
[2] Ephesians 3:18
[3] John 10:27
[4] Ephesian 3:17
[5] Theosis (from the Greek theōsis) is the Christian teaching that human beings are called to participate in the life of Godthrough union with Christ. It does not mean that we become God by nature or cease to be human but become increasingly transformed by God’s grace, sharing in His love, holiness, and life while remaining fully human.
[6] Romans 8:9-12
Replenish 