...the text sets forth a charming fact which I desire to insist upon as God's Spirit shall help me. It is this - not merely that love desired our salvation, planned it provided it, and so on - But that the instrument that love has used has been love.
See the summer's sun assail and vanquish the iceberg which has floated from it's Northern home! Winter's ruder storms could not dissolve the monstrous mountain of ice, nor could a thousand hurricanes and storms break it in pieces - but the sun shot a strange tremor through its heart the moment he smiled on it and every beam that fell from the fair orb of day shot through it like a blast, till at last, yielding to the mysterious glow, the iceberg lost it's hardness of heart, bowed itself from its chilly loftiness, fell in to the warm gulf stream and was no more to be found.
Was it not so with you when the eyes of Jesus darted love into your heart?
Lose your sense of Jesus' love and the power of your religion is gone. You have stolen the life if you have taken away the love.
The Rabbis say that God took Moses soul away with a kiss. So it was I doubt not, for so He does with all His saints - He kisses them into Heaven
Sermon notes. This same sermon speaks about trusting the nail torn hands in which our names are written. Trust opens the way for the mystery of love to "happen". I see that now. I'm starting to understand why love is so very important. This sermon says God does not chide us in to relationship with Him, rather he loves us in to relationship. It's hard to begin to grasp a love like this. He woos us along with an outstretched invisible hand and we reach for him, stretching in faith ... hoping for something we don't know quite what. Yes, I know how that feels.
And what about this, He kisses them into Heaven. So sweet it kinda took me by surprise. What if it really is like that? This picture of tenderness that Rev. Spurgeon paints ... I can barely absorb this. I've read this sermon several times now and the words wash over me ... soothing ... but it's not sinking in. I am afraid to let it sink in. I have felt a tiny shimmer of something like this ... This love is seeping through the place where I let someone lightly run their finger over my soul. It absolutely amazes me. I'm thinking about this. I really hope C.H. Spurgeon is right about this. Sometimes you think you're going to be loved, or even just kissed, and it turns out ... not. I guess to be loved is the thing we all desire ... it gets our attention ... and we are even willing to settle for the tiniest taste of something vaguely like love. It's sad really. "Love" has been pulled this way and that until it's difficult to know what the word means. I love you. I say it every day to my family and my closest friends, and I mean it. The love Spurgeon is talking about is different from that. I'm thinking about this, this miracle of love.
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