Love Touches | Letters to a Samuel Generation
by Rachel Starr Thomson
written February 2002
Jesus stepped into the water where His cousin John awaited Him. As He slipped under the surface, perhaps the water whispered to Him of the future. Perhaps He heard the words of Paul, yet to be spoken: “For we have been buried with Christ in baptism...”
The touch of death shivered through the water that day.
When Jesus rose from the water His eyes swept the shores, where many familiar faces peered out at him. Perhaps He heard one part of His life close resolutely behind Him. As He looked at the faces of poor man and publican, scribe and sinner, He knew what was coming. The days were gone in which it would be said of Him, “And he grew in favour with God and with men.” No longer would the favour of men be His. Soon these old familiar faces would twist with hatred and with outrage at His words; hands He had known since His youth would try to cast Him off a cliff.
The shades of “Crucify Him” passed over the faces of the crowd.
Jesus did not consider turning back. His Father's will was clear; and it was just as clear that He would fulfill it. Such was the love of Son to Father, that the disapproval of His whole human family did not matter next to the wishes of His God.
Even so, it must have been lonely in the water that day.
God the Father knew that it was. He knew the shadows that burdened His son. He knew the sting that comes with losing the approval of people who ought to stand loyal. God the Holy Spirit understood, as well, and He also ached for the Son.
So together, the Father and the Spirit reached down to the lonely One.
The Holy Spirit touched Him. Not an indescribable, spiritual touch: a physical one. It was a touch with soft feathers and black eyes; the touch of a dove.
God the Father spoke to Him. “You are my beloved Son,” He reminded Jesus. “And I am well pleased with You.”
No one understood that day but John the Baptist, and even he was never quite sure what to make of what he had seen. All he knew was that he had seen great holiness at work.
He had seen great love.
Many years ago, an English Christian tried to capture the love of God in words, and he managed about as well as most of us do:
“Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made.
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
“To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Tho' stretched from sky to sky.
“O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints' and angels' song.”
That song is beautiful and poetic and very, very true; and it meant a great deal to the one who wrote it. But it gives only one side of God's love: the mystery side. It does not transmit the truth of God's practical love... the kind of love that touches and speaks to one who needs it.
God's love reaches not only to the stars, but to us. It touches people in concrete ways. It doesn't only delve to the lowest hell, but it lives and moves in slums and tenements and refugee camps. It is this sort of love that we must get a hold of if we want to be of any use to God in this world. A man who is dying of thirst does not care to hear that God's love is deeper than the ocean, but he will hear—he must hear—that God's love can be found in a glass of water. A child without family is not comforted to hear that God's love “is like a river,” but he does want to know that God's love is like a hug.
God's love is mystery, yes, but it is also immensely practical. If we as Christians claim to love each other, as Jesus commanded us to, we must live that love not in the far-off heights of noble thoughts and speculations, but in the day-to-day challenges of bad tempers and dull ordinariness, of tears and laughter, of inner needs and outer hunger. And if we are to demonstrate the love of God to the world, it will not be in a pie-in-the-sky, metaphysical way, but in earthly practicality.
If you read the gospels, you will see that the love of God touches. It heals. It feeds. It washes feet. Jesus did not just talk about the love of His Father; He demonstrated it.
Go and do likewise.
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