Sending Roots Down Deep

This prayer that Paul prays for the believers in Ephesus is like hearty food for my hungry heart.  I turn to it when I’m feeling weak and lame. Which means I turn to it a lot.

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:14-19)

Sometimes when praying through this, I’ll get down on my knees and dig my fingers into the carpet, as if to send them right through the floor, extending my roots into that mineral-rich soil of God’s love.  And I will myself to “get it”, to comprehend, “to know this love.”  I tighten my grasp, rooting myself in so the stormy winds won’t uproot me and carry me away.

The oxymora of this passage both baffle and delight me, almost willfully eluding my mind to go straight for my heart.  Take, for example, this vastly long and high and deep love that Paul describes: just how does one get his hands and head around such a love to grasp it?

I looked up the word from the original Greek that’s translated “grasp” (or “comprehend”), and found this musical mouthful:

kat-al-am-ban'-o : to lay hold of
• to lay hold of so as to make one's own, to obtain, attain to, to take into one's self, appropriate
• to seize upon, take possession of
• to lay hold of with the mind; to understand, perceive, learn, comprehend

Which then brought to mind another verse that paints a picture of seizure: “I press on to take hold (katalabw) of that for which Christ Jesus took hold (katelhmfyhn) of me.” (Phil 3:12)  So, just who is taking hold of whom?  Hmmm.

Another perplexing paradox: Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers to “know this love that surpasses knowledge.”  Can he hear himself, the irony of it?  Isn’t this a bit like like playing tag and designating the smallest child “it”?  He races back and forth on stubby legs, his little arms fully extended, but the taller, faster kids always remain just out of reach...

But then I ask myself, what is the thing to be “known?”  Love.  Is love a fact to be apprehended through reasoning?  No.  One becomes acquainted or familiar with love; experiences it.  So, wondrously, love does indeed surpass being so apprehended.  It is encountered, and abides such that we may become intimately acquainted and familiar with it.  If we would abide in it, that is.

So, there I am, on the floor with my nails digging into the rug, taking hold of that rich soil of His love.  And all of these ponderings causes the camera in my mind’s eye to pan out, and I see how massive is the earth in which I’m planted, how high and wide and deep it is.  And I settle into this truth:  it’s not me that has a firm grip on this plot of God’s love as much as it’s He that has a firm grip on me.  And He makes His love, His very self, intimately knowable.

And I relax, and stretch my fingers wide.  And drink deep.