Mysterious Ways
To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal
If you wanna kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel
On your knees, boy
This is my favorite line in the U2 song Mysterious Ways because it hits at the core message of love. This is a song about love, about the force that binds and unites us when we allow it to. It about the core nature of God as a God of love who pours that out on all people - a love never ending and without boundaries. While that love is given without condition, we must still cooperate in order to participate in the desire of God that all should flourish. Thus the line in Mysterious Ways about kneeling in humility, in confession, and in love. If I wanna kiss the sky, I better learn how to kneel; “she moves in mysterious ways.” The she here is God and she is also love.
Bono explains how a conversation about the ambiguous gender of God in Hebrew led to the use of she for love. I believe the scriptures to be intentional in this because God is relational and made humanity in God’s image, both male and female.
“In fact one of the names of God, El Shaddai, means 'the breasted one. ' If the greatest creative force in the world is a woman giving birth, then of course the greatest creative force in the universe is likely to be a feminine spirit. 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth ' is how the Bible opens. 'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. ' Until God makes her move. 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. ' 'The world moves on a woman’s hips. ' David Byrne. Sex can be awkward.” (Bono p 300)
Full access for all readers opens on Thursday March 21, 2024
The creative Spirit of God is connected to love because, as we know, God is love. The very nature and being of God is love in fact. (1 John) As a relational God, we experience that love as creatures and are able to perceive and participate in that love through prevenient grace. God invites us to participate in new creation as we come to be more perfect in love.
But what are ways that we can engage and learn the love of God? Experiencing that love is one. Living with examples of those who participate in the love of God is another. Scripture is also a way and Bono speaks to this in his chapter on the song Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way.
A good strategy for me is to continually go back to the source. To drop my bucket in the well in hope of a refill. Why am I always talking about the scriptures? Because they sustained me in the most difficult years in the band and they remain a plumb line to gauge how crooked the wall of my ego has become. To getting the measure of myself. This is where I find the inspiration to carry on. The exhortation that makes this struggle with the self workable. The wisdom that makes it doable. (Bono pp 528–529)
One of the most pure uses of scripture is the view of ourself in light of who Jesus is and what we know of him. This is what Bono is reminding us about - how do we measure up with the one we claim to follow? Bono discusses the Apostle Paul whose transformation changed the early Church and continues to shape that body today.
I have so much to learn from this ancient writer. How does someone who first shows up as a monumental pain-in-the-arse fundamentalist become someone who can write the greatest ode to love in two thousand years? Somewhere on his spiritual path he discovers love is bigger than anything in its way. That 'no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. ' (Bono p 529)
Bono is describing the writing of 1 Corinthians chapter 13.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end. (1 Cor 13:3–7, The Message)
If we wanna kiss the sky we better learn how to kneel. Prayer is a way to live into love. When we pray it is a formational act. Prayer is conversation with God and those of us who see God as open and relational believe that prayer moves God’s heart. When we pray, especially when it is for others, we become attuned to the heart of God. When we pray we encounter an opportunity for transformational love. Paul prayed for that and became a new human being who saw Jesus in everyone he encountered. Paul moved from hate and certitude to the infinite possibilities of living in love.
Can we live into the reality of a God who loves all? Can we love all? It is one of the hardest but most meaningful things we can do as human beings. Love is the tie that can bind our desperately fractured world back together. But only if we truly love as God loves.
“If you listen you can hear the silence say 'When you think you’re done, you’ve just begun ' Love is bigger than anything in its way.” (Bono p 531)
Love moves in mysterious ways and is bigger than anything in its way. Love is bigger than selfishness, violence, hatred, hell, government, and even death.
Love is bigger than anything in its way…
Bono. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.