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Gretchen Mure Rodriguez

When Love Sweeps In (Day 22)

Today we celebrate the day Love took on human form and was birthed into the earth; Christmas day!


Love comes and sweeps me off of my feet at times when I least expect it! At times Love comes and overwhelms me and at other times it feels as though my senses have dulled. In fact lately, the times which are usually the most amazing, have felt the driest. Recently, the times I feel Him the most is when I'm just thinking about Him and not making any effort of my own. He comes and initiates conversations with me, or just surprises me with overwhelming love for me that hasn't been earned by anything I have done; 
it is a gift.
 
I now long for Him to come and reveal Himself to me in ways I have nothing to do with. Such beauty in the absence of striving! Though He is in me, I cannot force a manifestation of His glory. Though I am FILLED with Him, I find myself craving greater consciousness of my holy union with Christ. I realize that I am as close as any human can be, yet find myself stuck and unable to get past this level of nearness He has blessed me with. Such irony! Only Jesus can come and allow me to experience deeper depths. This desire for Him consumes me. I am lovesick!


"I think the prayer of union is the ‘cellar’ in which our Lord places us when and how He chooses, but we cannot enter it through any effort of our own. His Majesty alone can bring us there and come into the centre of our souls. In order to declare His wondrous works more clearly, He will leave us no share in them except complete conformity of our wills to His and abandonment of all things: He does not require the faculties or senses to open the door to Him; they are all asleep."  -Teresa of Avila








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