Reciprocal love and what this means for God and you

I watched a film recently based on the Thomas Hardy novel ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’. One of the main stories is about a rich middle-aged farmer. He is utterly besotted with a beautiful young woman, Bathsheba, who is the owner of the next door farm. He loves her passionately. He is prepared to die for her, to do anything to make her happy, to be there for her in her troubles, to protect her, and so on. The problem is that the deep love he feels for her is not mutual – in other words, there is no reciprocal love within the relationship as she does not feel the same for him. She certainly has respect for him, and can see his many good personal qualities. She also recognises that his love for her is sincere and true, and will likely last. What she doesn’t though feel is the same love back. Inevitably, he ends-up completely despairing as he slowly realises his love for her is not returned. 

Then, as I was watching this film and seeing the tragedy of it all play-out, it dawned on me that our love for God (and God’s love for us) must also be reciprocal. Otherwise, our relationship with God would also be tragic if one of the sides did not love back. So, it is not enough for us to respect God, to see his many good qualities etc., we must also love God. Similarly, it is not enough for God to respect us, to see our good qualities etc., he must also love us. The question then is, ‘What is love?’ Well, there are a lot of answers to this question, but one of them I believe is that if you love another you are glad to be with that person, indeed, you are delighted to be in his/her presence. Moreover, reciprocal love in relation to God means that I can be glad or delighted to be in God’s presence, when I open myself up to his love for me. This then gives me a deep sense of peace and stillness, as I also recognise that God in return is, incredibly, glad and delighted to be in my presence! As the prophet says in Zephaniah 3:17:

            

      “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will           quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

While contemplating all this, I was then reminded of a brief exchange I had with a blogger, Ted, a while back, who asked me, ‘What are you hearing Jesus telling you now?’ First I was taken aback by this question, but waited a little, and with some nervousness, as the blogger was testing to see if I took my own advice from a post of mine. Then I heard what I definitely felt as Jesus’ voice saying to me, softly but very clearly: ‘Trust me that I love you Steve, and tell the same to Ted.’