Earlier this week, a good friend of mine read out loud to me excerpts from one of my favorite books (and now hers), Impact of God, by Fr. Iain Matthew.  I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything from that book with all of you.  The book’s purpose is to introduce the reader to St. John of the Cross, but even more importantly, I think, to gain a deeper understanding of God’s desire for relationship with us, especially when prayer is dark and dry.  Here’s a little taste from one of the first chapters of the book:

[God] does not give in a general way only, like rays of sunlight shining above a mountain, but leaving me-in-particular shadowed in the valley.  John’s God enters to confront the other person as if there were no other.  It seems to her that God has no other concern, ‘but that he is all for her alone.’  God comes in strength, capable of reconciling opposites, ‘giving life for death’s distress.’  His embrace is as wide as Good Friday to Sunday, and nothing in the person is too much for him.  He finds in the soul, not a burden, or a disappointment, but a cause for ‘glad celebration.’  John dares to place on the lips of his God the words:

‘I am yours, and for you, and I am pleased to be as I am that I may be yours and give myself to you.’

Ponder that.

More to come . . .