With my Patrons & Peers group, I’m reading a book called Devotional Classics, which has excerpts from all sorts of theologians from a variety of Christian backgrounds. A few weeks ago, we read a bit by Bernard of Clairveaux. He was talking about the four levels of devotion we go through.

First, we love ourselves for our own sake. Then we love God for our own sake. Then we love God for His own sake. Then, rarely, once in a while, we get a glimpse of how to love ourselves for God’s sake.

As we discussed this as a group, I mused that this growth can be explained as “circles” of faith.

Every human begins life with self-centered focus. This is perfectly natural. To quote one of my college professors, “Every baby is a tyrant.” And it’s true! We have to be taught to think about someone other than ourselves (and some of us are more successful at learning this than others, LOL). We are, at the core, the centers of our own universes.

I remember when I was a child, maybe six or seven, I was sitting in the car with one of my parents. We’d pulled to a halt at the end of our long, winding road, where it intersects the main thoroughfare through town, Rt. 28. I couldn’t tell you what season it was or where we were going. But I distinctly remember this moment where I looked at one of the cars driving by, saw the driver through the window, and had this strange epiphany.

I realized that was a person in that car–one I didn’t know. Whose name I didn’t even know. I realized that they were driving somewhere I wasn’t going, for a purpose that had nothing to do with my life. I realized they had joys and pains, friends and enemies…all very different from mine.

It’s at once silly and profound, but it represents a huge turning point in my young life–that point where I realized it wasn’t about me. When I realized that I had nothing to do with most of the world. I saw my own smallness, and instead of just being humbling (though it is that), what it really did was throw the doors of the world wide open.

It made me aware of all the many stories playing out all around me…stories I could learn if I looked beyond my own nose.

My circle expanded. It suddenly went beyond just me, my family, and my friends. It expanded to include strangers.

It’s likely no coincidence that was about the same time in my life when God and Jesus went from being vague concepts I learned about in church to beings that I loved. When I looked beyond me, much as Bernard says would happen, I began to see that there must be Someone greater than me, and that Someone is God. I realized that God loves me, and so I loved him back.

In this second phase, this second circle, we realize that God will hear our petitions, and so we make them. But a bit of the transactional still lingers in our understanding and in our thoughts.

We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him because He sent His son to die for us. We love Him because we eat and are filled. We love Him because of the signs and wonders. We love Him because He created. We love Him because He saved. We love Him because He answers our prayers.

We love Him for what He does.

This, too, is natural. After all, Jesus came to do things. He performed signs and wonders. But what did He say so many times in the Gospels? He accused people of having little faith because that was all they cared about.

Our circles are still too small. It’s still to close to that “me-centric” way of seeing things. But how do we expand it?

That comes when we separate our love from the transaction–both love of God and love of others. We stop loving Him for what He’s done and begin to love Him for who He is.

The same holds true of the people around us. We need to love people, not because they believe what we believe or think what we think, not because we like what they do or because they helped us out…we need to love people for who they are.

Image-bearer.
God-made.
Beloved of the Father.
Worthy of salvation.

It isn’t easy–neither having that love of humankind nor of God. And I don’t know about you, but I need constant reminders to stay in that circle. It’s so, so easy to slip back into “me.”

But you know what? That circle still isn’t the end-game. Not according to St. Bernard, and not according to God, and not according to our own experience either. You know where we really want to be, even if only for moments at a time?

That fourth circle, that fourth level of love and devotion is when we can see ourselves clearly, as God sees us.

We can see our smallness…and our greatness. We can see who we really are, apart from what we do. We can see how much He loves us and love ourselves in that same way, not with self-interest, but with pure grace, pure mercy.

In those moments, we know how we fit in the world. We might just be one little person in one little car on one little road in one little town in one little county in one little state in one little country…but He loves us. He loves us so much that He sent Christ to die for us. He loves us even though we’re petty and selfish and greedy. He loves us, and not because of those good deeds we did or how often we read our Bible. He loves us, not because of what we’ve done or dream of doing or refrain from doing.

He loves us because we are His. And so, in those glimpses of eternity, we love ourselves because we are His. 

Those moments are always fleeting. Just glimpses of our true place in our Father’s heart. But they equip us, friends, to go back to that third circle and dwell there with purpose.

Because when we see ourselves through God’s eyes, we see everyone else that way too. And you know what happens when we view others through God’s eyes?

We love them. Not for what they do. For who they are.

Who do we need to work on loving with God’s love today?