“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you. . . it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame . . . I am afraid that if that cord of communion is snapped, then I’ve a nervous notion I would take to bleeding inwardly.”

These are the words given by Charlotte Bronte to a character in her novel Jane Eyre. Mr. Rochester is expressing his love for Jane just before he asks her to marry him. The novel follows the progress of Rochester’s attachment to Jane and hers to him.

The image of the string joining him to the person he loved more than any other, and the very life in him sustained by that string, seemed to me much like St. Paul’s relationship to Christ. Paul speaks of on inner connection that is inviolable: “I was given a thorn in the flesh. . . three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. . . That is why, for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses. . . for when I am weak, then I am strong.”(2Corinthians 12:12:9-12) The communion between God and Paul enabled Paul to become “the great apostle”: “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13).

King David of the Old Testament knew of such a relationship. In Psalm 51, David has experienced the snapping of the “string” that joins him to God. He pleads with God to restore it: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalms 51:10)

St. Paul experienced such intensity in his relationship to Christ. His words have informed the world that there is in truth such a relationship that can be had with the Lord Himself: For, now abides faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love. (1Corinthians 13:13)

Bronte’s novel concerns human love, but is expressed in the terms that we can all recognize as a love that comes only from the source and Person of love itself, our God in Christ. May we all experience the “string” than binds us to Him.

Love in Him,

Prue