I'll get to the book eventually, but first the important context. I've read the poems of George Herbert, the 17th Century Anglican poet, for many, many years. I don't remember exactly when I first read Herbert's 'Love III', which I consider the finest devotional poem in the English language, but it has become for me a description of the love of God that is beyond description.
Apart from the Apostle John, the final poem in George Herbert's book of poems, comes nearest to an accurate description of the nature and meaning of divine love as I have experienced it ever since my conversion in 1967. Herbert's poem, 'Love Bade Me Welcome' is a poem I read and return to so often. I want to try explaining why.
Let me start with the hinge point of my spiritual life. As far as the externals are concerned, conversion doesn't look that big a deal. Somebody changes their mind about things, makes a decision, and gets on with life. Looking back, I recall a confused and troubled teenager, kneeling in a dull church vestry, at 10 o'clock at night, and finally giving in to what I can only describe as a Love the likes of which I had never known.
It was more than a big deal. It was a surrender of the heart, a re-orientation of the will, a cleansing of the conscience, a renewing of the mind, a re-aligning of those fundamental loyalties that define who we are. It was a relinquishing of all that fankled mess of mistakes made, wrong decisions, stupid behaviour, destructive habits and messed up relationships that was accumulating into a life headed for serious trouble. I heard the gospel preached and don't remember now much of the words used, the arguments put forward or the persuasive rhetoric of a good preacher. But I do remember, vividly and still vivifyingly, a sense that the risen Jesus was saying to me, a 16 year old Lanarkshire lad, expelled from school, in serial trouble with the police, "I have come that you might have life; and have it more abundantly."
Those words of Jesus "life more abundant", I heard as if spoken from heaven to me. That night, at the end of a late after-church service, I had a sense that I had been found by Jesus himself. I heard a call to follow Him into a new and different future, and I said yes. Life was never the same. How could it be? I had been challenged to take a risk, to trust Jesus Christ the one who died for the sin of the world, and for my sin, and to seek the forgiveness of God. I did. I was challenged further to repent of my former life, and I did. Not only remorse and regret, though these were part of it. But repentance as a change of heart, a new direction, indeed a new Director of life, the risen Lord Jesus made real through the Spirit of God the Father.
In one sense it's no one else's business what my early years were about, or what spiritual experiences I have had, or how I've lived my life since. In another and much more deliberate sense, it is my business to bear witness to the faithful love that welcomed me and renewed me, the goodness and mercy that forgave me, the grace that has guided and sustained me, the God who in Christ gave my life purpose, meaning and motive, such that it has sustained my faith for 58 years.
Over nearly six decades of Christian discipleship, however much I have grown and matured into who and what I am today, it is entirely by God's grace, and only because 'Love bade me welcome.' Through the shaping and nurturing of that Love I am a follower of Jesus, a member of a diverse Christian community, an ordained minister of our Baptist tradition, a theologian, and a lifelong student of the traditions of Christian faith. I have so many debts, intellectual, spiritual and relational. I reflect gratefully on those influences and people who have shaped my thought and practice, those who have guided and encouraged, those whose own struggles and wrestling have helped me to "work out my own salvation with dear and trembling, knowing it is God who is at work within me to bring about his good pleasure."
Though I didn't know it at the time, George Herbert's explanation of his poems exactly describes the ups and downs of Christian life, including my own. He described his collection of poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.”
I read this poem and inevitably, and wonderingly, it takes me back to that evening in April 16, 1967, and describes exactly my experience of coming to know Jesus, of hear his call, and answering it by trusting the love that bade me welcome, and believing in the One who gently silenced my shame, guilt and sense of unworthiness. I can't be the only one who feels the echoes these sublime words set up in the soul, about the Love that bade, and bids us, welcome.
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
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