Trinity United Methodist Church Daily Scripture Email Devotion "God's Name and Nature is Love" for Thursday, 12 June 2014

Trinity United Methodist Church Daily Scripture Email Devotion "God's Name and Nature is Love" for Thursday, 12 June 2014
O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you - if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love. (Song 5:8).
This is a love song, so the above verse is not surprising; it's the kind of thing people in love say about each other.  Taken allegorically, as the mystics of Israel and the Church have done over the centuries, it's how they/we feel/believe about God.  I know it's unusual for us, as rational persons, to imagine our relationship with God in this way, but it is an idea I hope you will entertain.  It is an idea that the Wesley brothers (John and Charles) and the earliest theologians of the Church believed.  In fact, one of the greatest hymns penned by Charles was this:  Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown; it's not very singable, otherwise we would sing it in worship, but here is the central strophe of the song:

Tis Love! 'tis Love!  thou diest for me, 

I hear thy whisper in my heart. 

The morning breaks, the shadows flee, 

pure Universal Love thou art: 

to me, to all, thy mercies move - 

thy nature, and thy name is Love. 

We United Methodists hold to the central teaching, which, itself holds us together, that God's nature and essence is love; universal love, and if God's love isn't for all, then it isn't love at all.  Amen. 
Remember:  Sonlight sendoff concert:  Friday, June 13, 7:00 ! 
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Welcome to the new Trinity United Methodist Church's Daily Scripture Email system.
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"Come, O thou Traveller unknown" by Charles Wesley (1742)
1. Come, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see,
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee,
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
2. I need not tell thee who I am,
My sin and misery declare;
Thy self hast called me by my name:
Look on thy hands, and read it there!
But who, I ask thee, who art thou!
Tell me thy name, and tell me now.
3. In vain thou strugglest to get free;
I never will unloose my hold:
Art thou the Man that died for me
The secret of thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
Till I thy name thy nature know.
4. Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new unutterable name?
I tell me, I beseech thee, tell:
To know it now resolved I am:
Wrestling I will not let thee go,
'Till I thy name thy nature know.
5. 'Tis all in vain to hold thy tongue,
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinnew were unstrung,
Out of my arms thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go,
'Till I thy name, thy nature know.
6. What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long;
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then am I strong;
And when my all of strength doth fail,
I shall with thee God-man prevail.
7. My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise,
I fall, and yet by faith I stand:
I stand, and will not let thee go,

'Till I thy name, thy nature know.
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