The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on May 1, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
In the book of Genesis, we are told that we are made in the image and likeness of God. In the letter to the Philippians, we are instructed to imitate the humility of Jesus. In the letter to the Ephesians, we are instructed to mature toward the fullness of holiness for which we were created, as modeled by Jesus. In the Gospel of John, we are reminded, simply, that God is Love.
Given the assurance that we are capable of imitating God; given that we were made in the image of God, who is Love; and given the instructions to look toward Jesus as an example, who we know to be both human and divine; what does it look like in prayer to imitate God, who is Love?
Surely, my human love is not as grand as the Love of God. My love is limited. I can only give so much. Yet, if I was made in the image and likeness of God, then my human love is not separate from the love of God, no matter its size. It is good to keep offering my small acts of love.
Surely, my human love is not as forceful as the Love of God. I am easily irritated by others and tired by ongoing outputs. Yet, since I was made in the image and likeness of God, and I long to return to the wholeness of the Love of God, the singularity of my human love can become a powerful force of Love for God. As I seek to align the small, yet singular force of my human love, with Divine Love, the two loves form a union. The incomplete force of my human Love, irritable and exhausted as it is, gets swept up into the wholeness of God’s love.
Perhaps, then, the pressing question is not really how I, in my humanness, could attempt to love like God—as if any of my finite actions were the source or force of loving connection between me and God—but rather: how do I allow the enveloping Love of God to run through me, so that all of my actions might be loving, just as God is Love? Allowing the Love of God to flow through me as Love, is to realize my innate capacity of being made in the image and likeness of God. In prayer, I come to realize that the Love of God is already, always working through my human efforts to love.
