A Love You Cannot Escape
Your love towers over me. Gracious tempest in the sea, surround me like a storm.
Let your tide of mercy rain. Let it flood my heart again, surround me like an ocean.
Your love is crashing over me, it’s surging like a raging sea. Immerse me in the wonder of Your love.
A downpour of unending grace consuming all my reckless ways, my sins submerged your love has saved my soul. Your love is like a storm
Today I felt the love of God. What a strange thing to say since we should be feeling it every day! But sometimes you just get a wave of it, a revelation of what it means to be loved by God. And it’s beautiful.
Today this song spoke to me. I didn’t intend for anything spectacular to happen when I added this song to my playlist for the morning, I wasn’t feeling particularly ‘holy’ either. I was just eating my breakfast and playing with my daughter when I found the words I was singing along to really touched my soul and suddenly I was in tears with a revelation of God’s love for us.
For as long as I can remember I have had nightmares about storms. Every kind of storm — tornadoes, tsunamis, massive winds, floods, you name it. The thing that frightened me the most was the sheer size of it, and the fact that it was inescapable. No matter how fast I tried to run or how far away I was from it, I knew there was no escaping, it was going to reach me and I would be engulfed in it. I don’t remember ever dying though, I would be submerged into the deepest water but I could still breath. And the breath was so much more satisfying!!
I think this is why this song spoke to me. It is about a storm, and not just any old storm but a tempest (a violent windy storm). Every sentence uses words associated with storms, oceans and winds. And I understand that. I know the feeling of the storm ‘towering over me’, ‘surrounding me’. I know that when a flood comes, it fills every space, leaving no space for air or anything else. I know the intensity of a wave crashing over you, so you have no control and you find yourself at it’s mercy. All my life I have been afraid, but today I understand. This is God’s love for me.
I cannot escape God’s love. It is surrounding me. I can’t run from it or hide from it or keep it at a ‘safe distance’. Like a flood, it fills every part of my heart, my life and my being. There is no space for anything else. If I surrender to his love, it will take over my life like a crashing wave. I will be at his mercy, and he will take me to the place he wants me to be.
The Lord is gracious and righteous; Our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simple hearted. When I was in great need, He saved me. Be at rest once more O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you. For you O Lord have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. — Psalm 116
