God's ways are not our ways. His love is often rough and easily seen as cruel. His love batters our hearts until our hearts are completely His.

Batter My Heart, Oh God! Let's look at someone in the Bible who lived with an open heart towards God to see if God battered it.

Either God catches us like a fish with a hook (enticing and wooing) or He hunts us like game (force to break, overthrow, imprison).

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Batter my heart three-personed God, for I'm lost unless You ravage me! You must quell my passions and bend me—yes, even bruise me. I will be yours!

Though most of us fight the transitory nature of our relationships, it remains our living reality. So what does God say about all the lonely people?

Living is about relationship with Him. And the way He accomplishes this is to reduce us down, down to dependence on Him, a moment-by-moment involvement.

In deep relational building there's a dance in our relationships that can all day long be seen as a courting, even in brotherhood. A Bromance.

In the past I have looked at relationships as if my God was miserly. I felt the need to extract from them as much as I could as quick as I could, because surely the Hand of God was about to remove them.

We are the body and the Body of His residence, His place in this hostile world.

The Lord God is 'with us' by the most amazing intimacy…accessible, reachable, knowable!

Anna, remembered in scripture and noted for the sacrifice of her entire lifetime, was given the privilege to see, to rejoice in, the Messiah present on earth.