Day 34: To Be Alone With You

I heard this Sufjan Stevens song in church earlier this year - it is beautifully written and has a beautiful melody.  The title caught me off guard.  To Be Alone With You.  It has such intimate connotations.  After listening to the song a few times, it made me think about the intimacy of the relationship that Jesus desires with each one of us. 

What is it like to be alone with someone?  You are undoubtedly vulnerable.  You are finally alone with that person that you like, and now you have to make a connection, sustain conversation - see if there is anything really there.  You may sit through some silences - you know that there are thoughts racing through both of your minds.  But you remember, that person wanted to spend that time alone...with just you.  

Jesus wants an intimate relationship with each one of us.  The phrase intimate relationship is often misconstrued.  We often jump right to physical intimacy, because that is how modern culture wants to define intimacy.  But intimacy is also connecting at the heart level. 

God gives us different relationships in our lives - friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends (and eventually spouses) - so that we can experience what His love is like through them.  But even when we feel we are so in love, or we have such a kindred spirit with a friend, God loves us more.  His love far surpasses any other love we experience.  There is no beaker that can measure the volume of His love or a ruler that can measure the depth.  He shows us love and says see how great this is?  There is something greater yet.

God wants to be alone with each and every one of us.  The lyrics to the song say this:

To be alone with me you went up on a tree

If I think of all the lengths that anyone in my life has gone to to so that we could spend some time together, nothing can compare to Jesus.  He died to know each one of us.   He died to have an intimate, heart-level  relationship with each one of us.  

If you ever feel lonely, know that there is a man who desperately wants you to be in His presence.  He carried a cross on His back and died a very public and painful death to be with you.  When He is with you, He sees everything that you are.  He cherishes that time with you - and He has all the time you need.

~SP

This is a picture of the Milwaukee portion of Lake Michigan.  One of the reasons that Sufjan's song stuck with me is the opening line: I'd swim across Lake Michigan...to be alone with you.  When you are standing on the rocky wall early in the morning at the lakefront, before the sun rises, you can only see a few lights on the water.  I know that lake Michigan isn't the most vast or even the deepest body of water, but on a morning like the one pictured above, it seems like it is infinite.  For Jesus, it would be a small distance and a journey worth taking to reach our hearts.