I just finished reading C. S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. In one scene, love alights on Earth. I was completely struck by his description. It isn't the description we typically think of. It is powerful and strong, not soft and gentle. Because of this, his description captivated me with its utter truth:
"It was fiery, sharp, bright and ruthless, ready
to kill, ready to die, outspeeding light: it was Charity, not as mortals
imagine it, not even as it has been humanized for them since the
Incarnation of the Word, but the translunary virtue, fallen upon them
direct from the Third Heaven, unmitigated. They were blinded, scorched,
deafened. They thought it would burn their bones. They could not bear
that it should continue. They could not bear that it should cease."
Breathless. The full weight of God's love must sap all word from our minds. I had always heard the term "love till it hurts," but I never understood it until my daughter was born. As I held her in my arms a few days old, I hurt, my heart literally was pained. I had never felt that and it was then I understood that love can indeed hurt. You can have love so strong it hurts. God, I am sure, has that for us. But what if I could feel the other way around? If I could feel the intense love God has for me? It must be what Lewis describes, a love so sharp, so all-encompassing of truth, so overwhelming we can hardly stand it and yet want it to always touch us forever. Indeed, some day, I will feel it and revel in it. Hallelujah!
