Sea of love

 We declare to you what was from the beginning … what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:1a, 3-4)

‘You live in a sea of love,’ so went the words I whispered to Ben on the night before he left for the university. I wanted to give him what I want, what I need, naming the only thing that truly fills the heart with joy: to know, to feel, to live in awareness of an ocean of love surrounding your whole being so that there is nowhere to fall that the waters will not hold you.

I did not lie to him, though some might suggest I indulged in a fantasy. It’s undeniable: The things we fear can and will happen to us and those we love; hurts and wounds are unavoidable and there are those who don’t give a wink that we bleed or that the knife that cut us was in their hand. And sometimes, we ourselves are the assailant.

But when I think of Ben stepping deeper into the complexity of that world (and remembering how naïve, lost and unprepared I was at his age), I find comfort and hope in the sea of love surrounding him—the love of his parents, his brother and Dixie, my wife; also, the professors, tutors, helpers and strangers who, perhaps without even knowing it, will become bearers (sacraments!) of the Love who alone satisfies the human heart.

And I think of myself, believing, trusting, knowing by experience that the love I whispered in his ear in the darkness of a Saturday evening is not my private possession but the Love and Light of the One who was from the beginning, the One who labors in all that is good and true, the Love who flows like a river amid our aches and pains, wants and needs, hopes and ambitions, successes and failures, carrying us out of isolation toward one, great sea of Love.

‘Father, may they all be one,’ Jesus once prayed, ‘as you and I are one.’ It’s a dream, God’s dream for the world and every last one of us. We are a long way from it. But the dream already comes true, like in the unmistakable joy of whispering words of the love you need into another heart.

David L. Miller