God's Love

This is the love that must break
What it must take
And in the breaking, bless;
This is the love that will press
Us out of measure
And lay our treasure
In the dust.
This is the love that must.

There is no other way.
We all have gone astray,
With hearts hardened and blind;
And we will find
The glory of His grace
In His loving, shining face,
When the fire burns out our dross.

There is no way to God
except through the cross.

© Tom Prato/Pratonix

The little poem above, titled 'Divine Love', needs a background explanation. The first stanza is:

This is the love that must break
What it must take
And in the breaking, bless;
This is the love that will press
Us out of measure
And lay our treasure
In the dust.
This is the love that must.

Reading this, we ask:

i. Why should this love break us? Why should this love press us out of measure? Why should this love lay our treasure in the dust? In other words, why should this love hurt us?

The second stanza is:

There is no other way,
We all have gone astray
With hearts hardened and blind;
And we will find
The glory of His grace
In His loving, shining face,
When the fire burns out our dross.

Reading this, we find an explanation:

i. God knows that we have ‘hearts hardened and blind’. We are sinners, and sin has cut us off from God. God is light, but we dwell in darkness.

ii. The second thought is about ‘the glory of His grace’. God is telling us that we are His creatures, and He is the Creator. The creature cannot exist apart from the Creator. Alas, because of sin, man (God’s creation) is living a life of vanity and frustration and curse. Man was created to live by God’s grace, just like the flowers of the field. On the hillside, after the rains, see the wild lilies blossom and nod their heads in the breeze. They have been through the storm, and are now brighter, fresher, stronger, happier, though they are but frail flowers.

iii. ‘His loving, shining face’. Lord, make your face shine upon me! That’s a prayer and a benediction. After all the tribulations of life, in our long and arduous journey upon earth, one day we are going to come face to face with God. And we will be wonder-struck at the beauty of His countenance. (And shall I tell you something? We will be wonder-struck that we, too, look like Him, and our faces are glowing, just as His face blazed with glory upon the mountain-top.)

The poem ends with a couplet:

There is no way to God
except through the cross.

i. Here the poet is telling us that if we want to know God we have to go the way of the cross. Read Phil 3.10. That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death.

ii. Notice, the cross is seen in ‘the fellowship of His sufferings’ and in ‘being conformed to His death’. But the cross (the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ) cannot be separated from the resurrection. So death leads to life, breaking leads to blessing.

iii. God's love is a love that chastens. May the Lord speak to us!

© Pratonix