{"id":6197,"date":"2018-08-03T21:01:48","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T01:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2018-08-06T15:27:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T19:27:21","slug":"gods-joy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=6197","title":{"rendered":"God&#8217;s Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Boyle-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Boyle-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6758\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Boyle-2.jpg 400w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Boyle-2-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was brought up and educated to give assent to certain propositions.  God is love, for example.  You concede &#8220;God loves us,&#8221; and yet there is this lurking sense that perhaps you aren&#8217;t fully part of the &#8220;us.&#8221;  The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God&#8217;s fingertips.<\/p>\n<p>Then you have no choice but to consider that &#8220;God loves me,&#8221; yet you spend much of your life unable to shake off what feels like God only embracing you begrudgingly and reluctantly.  I suppose, if you insist, God has to love me too.  Then who can explain this next moment, when the utter fullness of God rushes in on you &#8212; when you completely know the One in whom &#8220;you move and live and have your being,&#8221; as St. Paul writes.  You see, then, that it has been God&#8217;s joy to love you all along.  And this is completely new.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Gregory Boyle, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/tattoos_on_the_heart.html\">Tattoos on the Heart<\/a><\/em>, p. 25<\/p>\n<p>[Photo: Meadowlark Gardens, Virginia, April 3, 2012]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was brought up and educated to give assent to certain propositions. God is love, for example. You concede &#8220;God loves us,&#8221; and yet there is this lurking sense that perhaps you aren&#8217;t fully part of the &#8220;us.&#8221; The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God&#8217;s fingertips. Then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}