Love’s game

On the last day of the festival ...while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ’ (John 7:37-38)

It was a small thing, very small. In another time, it would have tripped my compulsive reflexes. Small things do this to me, like photos that do not hang level on the wall. My eyes are calibrated to capture the slightest imperfection, which propels me to fetch the level in the desk drawer so I can put things in order.

I wake in the night thinking about an uneven curtain rod or the bead of caulk on the counter top that is less than perfectly smooth, not to mention a hundred other things I’ve done wrong. No one else might see them, but I know where they are, each testifying to my imperfection and manifold inadequacies.

But the center cushion on the couch makes me smile, one corner turned up, no longer flush with the cushions on either side. In another time, I would get up and straighten them, but my normal compulsion is quiet, lost in a wave of love that washes through me, awakened by ... a rumpled sofa?

This makes absolutely no sense. Why should a sofa cushion awaken immense love for this place, for this time and for the life that is mine, given to me by forces far beyond any I pretend to control?

And it’s not just this. Why does the rainbow glint of afternoon sun on icicles hanging from car bumpers move me to tears of gratitude? Why do the exuberant stories of a grandson and the athletic exhaustion of his brother leave me barely able to speak? And why does every obsessive thought evaporate in holy joy as a dark-eyed little girl sneaks a peek at me from behind a mask and her mother’s leg across a crowded café? 

It is love I feel, a very great love within the bounds of my own being, leaking out my eyes, longing to be shared, hungry to celebrate the beauty of small things and tiny moments for all their infinite truth and joy.

If God is love, as I have long believed, surely the human soul is a divine playground where the Love Who Is coaxes us to come out of hiding and join Love’s holy game.

Maybe what’s happening is the answer to my decades old prayer to become as gracious and caring as a few older men who loved and guided me when I was young and even more foolish than I am now. They were the face of this Love who is determined to have its way in us.

I’m sure I saw this same Love in those beautiful dark eyes across the café, inviting me to come out and play.

David L. Miller