"I look at Him, He looks at me, and we are happy." What a beautiful statement. It comes, anecdotally, from an unnamed 18th century man who had, it seems, found his place in the sightline of God.
Basking. Beholding. Gazing. Withness. Prayer.
Jesus called it keeping company in Matthew 11:28 (MSG). He said it would change us.
I desire to be with Jesus so I become more like Jesus. I want to see me as Jesus sees me, to know His delight in being with me, and I with Him.
As I am coming to know deeply what it is to be loved, I want to move through the world with His way of loving, His sense of justice, His deep compassion.
I want to notice what He invites me to notice and see it with His eyes. I want my responses to mirror His responses because I have His whisper reverberating in my soul and I can discern it.
My longing is to have Him seep into all the liminal spaces of the day, and then leak out of my interior life into the exterior things of doing and being. That life would exude integrity and consistency of soul.
It's difficult sometimes. My shallowmindedness and distractibility run roughshod over those deeper longings and it feels like emptiness.
In the words of Flannery O'Connor, "I do not know you, God, because I am in the way."
This is the work that only God can do, and it is long and slow and sometimes feels lonely.
But.
He has known me forever and He calls me His own. He says nothing can separate me from Him. He throws His arm around me and promises to teach me His rhythms of grace.
His work.
So, I am certain He is even there, in my not enough. Still delighting to be together, still Himself longing for my spirit to encounter His Spirit, still Companion and Creator, Lover, Author, Architect, Savior, Friend.
Look up, daughter. Here I am.
I look at Him, He looks at me, and we are happy.
[Image Credit: "Melancholy" Odilon Redon, 1876, Public Domain]