Lord, You Are My Love

Lord, You are my love,

You alone I love, and all my loves

Are in the loving of You. Yet You

Came first in your love; In Your

Mysterious predestining, fixing my life,

Planning my destiny before the world began.

 

You are my love and when I wake—

Time and again in the many nights—

There is sometimes the faint line of dread,

Sometimes the inner terror of the Holy One,

And I fear lest I have offended You.

Then Your love comes—reassuring—

And in Your word, and on my knees,

And in the secret places

Of my secret heart, there is a tryst—

A man and God affair

Of love inexpressible. I weep

And seem to hear You too,

Not weeping as I, but with me, for me,

And the pain becomes a precious pain,

A rich suffering in joy,

And I am one with You.

Oh Triune Lover, persistent One

Who never leaves me night and day

But moves within my dreams, and lives within

My daily awakenings, hear of my love.

More than faint intimations

Are the visitations and the ‘never-leavings’

That I have known these years of all my life.

Sometimes my thoughts of leaving You grow strong

And with the thought bewilderment fast grows,

And, like the Psalmist, in my heart I cry,

‘Whither, Lord, shall I go from Thy presence?

Thou art not only the Eternal One

Being the Everywhere I’d go, but of Thee

And from Thee, I am what Thou have made me.

Separation intolerable

My inner spirit dreads.

Such loneliness apart from Thee

Is more than Hell itself, yet Hell’s substance

That void the rebellious know’.

Why in this night—this early morn—

Do I speak to You, speak thus?

Why does this moan escape my lips?

Why does my heart complain

When all You’ve ever shown

Is holy love to me? Ah, yes,

The rub lies there, the hurt, the pain,

That You are holy, You are pure,

And I am not. Strange truth and fact

That though You holy be and I am not

Your love enwraps my soul and spirit

Like a protecting mantle, a healing cloak

That cleanses as it loves, loves as it purifies

And makes me one with You,

Your inner heart to mine and mine to You.

This is the mystery—the pained alternation

Of love and fear, of fear and love—

The mystery that’s my life

From when conceived until this now

And ‘til the death that’s life

Releases me from pain and joy

Of the present mingling.

The present mingling is the grace

And love that I and God are one.

This is the dread that comes to me—the commingling

Of human flesh and Your dread Deity

Catching me up to all eternity

In a resistless love. Why then

Do I moan in the deep night

At the painful delight of present union,

Future joy and ecstasy—not Dionysian but pure

As love makes serene for ever?

Why should my heart complain

Except its shame should make me long

For the Then to be Now—the Then I dread

As now I dread, and yet adore?

Ah Lord! I love You deep,

Deeper than all my secret heart,

Deeper than Heaven and Hell themselves.

Your love once captured me

Even before I saw the Tree:

But all the time the Tree was there

With You, in You, for me, for them.

One word from You is spoken not

But in the Cross, and by the Cross,

And through the Cross, and from its self

Till Christ in all his love—

And Spirit-love along—

Ushers my trembling heart to You

Till all Your Fatherhood Embraces me for ever.

Dear Lord there’s no complaint,

Only the plaint gentle, the tender plea

That I may tell with power You give,

The everlasting love—the mercy full—

That lifts to love’s most holy height

And there retains for ever

The transformed spirit.

Lord, I plead,

Never release me from the noble call,

That dignity most high—that ministry

That makes the heart of me melt to be

One with Your love forever;

One as I tell Your love, in quivering tones

From depths that measure cannot know,

Your depthless, breadthless, heightless love

That captures me for ever,

And in its capture captures all

Its utter holiness had planned

For time and all eternity.

From All Things of the Spirit, by Geoffrey C. Bingham, p.97-99.