"... rooted and established in love ..."

Reading Ephesians 3:14-21

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

This one sentence is packed full of hope, and healing, and wholeness. The first thing that we note is that, in life, we are "rooted and established." We are not like those who are "without hope and without God in the world" (2:12). We are not detached from any ultimate meaning. We are not an accident of nature. We have a place in the Universe. Our existence means something.

Paul is clear about the nature of the grounds of our being. We are not about bare existence but about love. Love is always personal by definition. If we are grounded in love then we are grounded in a loving person, God. The roots of our life go down into a bedrock of love and from this we are able to draw up into ourselves continually the love of God. The whole context of our life provides for our need to be loved and cared for.

Paul prays that we will "know this love that surpasses knowledge." It is clear that Paul has two different kinds of knowing in mind. One type of knowing allows us to enter into this love, the other leaves us floundering. Both types of knowing are honored in the Bible. The knowing of the mind and the knowing of the spirit are both encouraged. The knowing that Paul prays for us to excel in with respect to the love of God is one of a deep inner experience and contact that is more immediate than thought. This is not to say that this kind of knowledge is irrational but that it is relational. While words and thoughts fail in trying to grasp the love of Christ there is a deep, personal, and relational level at which we may experience his love. In this way the mind filled with thoughts of God's love only begins to know what the spirit "filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" already knows.

I am more than a brain and a body. I have feelings, needs, hungers, desires, motivations, longings, drives, hopes, and aspirations. I hurt, get wounded, experience healing, and taste freedom. Being filled or satisfied is not something that the mind can do for us all by itself. There must be an acknowledgment that we are in a living relationship with God and that our deepest needs are fed out of that relationship. This is why we practice prayer, meditation, and worship in addition to rational reflection and cognitive thought.