My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-21. NIV
I once created a starscape in my garage. It was my youngest child's 4th year birthday, and in keeping a family tradition it would be a big one. This time it was a Star Wars theme. Spaceships, light sabers, and an expanse of stars. In my dark garage I had suspended black plastic with a strong light behind. Days before the kids had helped me poke holes in the plastic that would be stars, and clusters that would be galaxies and comets. All sizes, all shapes.
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Let your mind wander for a moment to the galaxies, countless stars of intense magnificence and power. Consider supernovae, explosions of such fury that temperatures climb to thirty then a hundred billion degrees in the seconds and then microseconds leading up to that moment. The heavens, the inestimable expanse, the unthinkable heat of such fury. That is the immensity and temperature of God's love.
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To face the fury of that love, we are undone, we are consumed, we are melted and melded into the vastness of that feeling that is heaven, that is God. There is no separation. I am at once myself, identity intact, and at once one with him, hearts blended, feelings felt, love bonding. All my being is in him and all of him is in me. I am no more, but I am forever more. I am all I ever was meant to be.
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No angel ever entered here. None other in all eternity were so invited. I am made one with God, as Jesus and the Father are one, I am one. And there in that place, hearts so closely bound, melded to be as intimate as shared love, as one love, my heart is healed, and his heart is healed. Yes, God, who has known loneliness from the dark depths of eternity, who felt it deeper than I will ever know, has found his heart's desire in that fierce closeness of my love. I am home, and he is home. A home long awaited.
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I peer into the dark night skies. I see stars, I see them as pinholes in the floor of heaven, flashes of the expanse, tiny glimpses of a love that burns with such fury; that awaits, that prays, that pleads, that longs for that oneness where there is no separation, where all fear is lost in love, where lonely hearts, the lonely heart of God, and the lonely heart I feel, are forever bound in inseparable companionship. "Just as I am in you, and you are in me, may they also be in us."
Jesus, Father, Spirit, I am undone, I am overcome, I am ravaged by the intensity your love. To me you say “I hear your voice, it moves me, like nothing else. With one glance of your eyes, you have ravished my heart, my love, my beloved. You are as beautiful as tears to me. Turn your eyes away, they overwhelm me!” How have I so come to matter to you? I have, and I have come to my senses; and now, I bind myself forever to you, and forever I discard the key.
© 2020 James Gorham