“O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
-Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
I fell in love with Jesus at an Episcopal church plant in western Pennsylvania. I was a college student. A relationship with the woman of my dreams had just ended, and all of the lights in the universe went dark for me. At the time, I tried anything and everything to find healing. I even went back to church. What I received there exceeded my wildest expectations. I was seized by the power of a new affection.
Today’s collect is all about love. The word is used three times in this prayer. The first and third appearances involve an act of the will, but they are predicated upon the “love” mentioned in the petition. We ask that God would “pour into our hearts such love toward” him, so that we might love him. Its authors knew that to esteem him “in all things and above all things,” we need to fall in love with him.
How do we fall in love with God? I used to think it was through the mind and the will. Fill your head with enough orthodox Christian information, and you’ll want to expel the bad and do the good. Combine Christian pep talks with intense moral effort, and you’ll succeed in being closer to God. I no longer believe that either sound teaching or exhortation is the primary engine of lasting change. The principal agent of transformation is the heart.1
I recently read an article by the British journalist Oliver Burkeman entitled, “Actually Doing It,” where he writes about the “knowing-doing gap.” In it, he notes that the key to human transformation is ironic:
“The most reliable way to cross the knowing-doing gap is to realize you don’t actually need to change at all. What usually stops people crossing the gap is that they make the stakes too high… You’re fine as you are – and you have the chance to get better. So why not try?”2
This sounds a whole lot like the word that seized me at that small church in western Pennsylvania. Our standing before God is not contingent upon us “loving [him] in all things and above all things.” It’s conditioned upon God’s one-way affection for people like you and me who have such a hard time loving at all. This means that the pressure is off. We don’t have to change at all. Ironically, this love has the power to capture our hearts. It has the strength to birth in us the desire to “try.”
May the Holy Spirit pour round after round of two-hundred-proof grace into our hearts, so that we overflow with love for God, our neighbor, and ourselves.
Simeon Zahl’s “The Cure of Souls: Theory of Change in Christian Ministry” helped clarify my thinking on how human transformation happens.
Oliver Burkeman, “Actually Doing It,” The Imperfectionist, May 4, 2022.
I love the 'round after round of two-hundred proof grace'. It's what I need, as I tend to be rather unloving (and very unlovable) at times. Thanks, Ben!
Resounds w me. Thanks much.