Most of us, at one time or another in our lives, have had the experience of being in love. Not just of loving someone, but of "being in love." There is a certain pre-occupation which comes with such an experience. Your thoughts turn unbidden towards the subject of your love. You find yourself spending all of your time in their company. And when you aren't with them, you are thinking about being with them. Such an experience can be described as intoxicating. Singer/songwriter John Denver once put it this way in a song he wrote for his wife, "You fill up my senses..."

The writer of the 42nd Psalm understood this experience. It is what is being described in that particular poem. The only difference is that the subject of the psalmist's love is not another person. It is God. "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God." (Psalm 42:1) This is a love poem which reflects on what it is like to be in love with God. There is desire to be in the presence of the beloved. There is remembering past experiences of being in the presence of the beloved. There is agony over present separation. There is confidence that love will indeed overcome such agony and restore the relationship once again. This is a poem about a deep and powerful relationship which calls forth a passionate response.

And this is not an isolated example in scripture where such an image is used to describe the relationship between we human beings and God. The Song of Solomon is a passionate, romantic, some would even say erotic writing. It is included in our scriptures in part because it offers a metaphor with which to reflect on the depth and passion which is possible as we relate to God. On several occasions in the Gospels Jesus uses images such as brides and bridegrooms and marriage and weddings to speak about faith and our relationship with God. Indeed, one of the key images in all of scripture for what our final, enduring encounter with God will be like is that of a wedding banquet, where Christ is the groom and we are the bride.

So often when we think about our relationship with God, we try to do so in polite, controlled, respectable terms. People who get too excited about God make us nervous. But I would suggest that the relationship which will offer us the most meaning, fulfillment and purpose is one which enthusiastically involves our entire being, wholly and completely. God is passionately in love with us and invites us to be passionately in love with God. That isn't always polite or controlled or even respectable. It will, in fact, make people nervous. It will also leave us feeling more alive than we have ever felt before. When was the last time you "longed" for God?

Because we have been created by God, in the image of God, there is, built into the very fabric of our being, a longing for God. It has been described as a God-shaped hole which only God can fill. Thus it is, I believe, that we long for God, even when we don't know it is God for whom we long. All around us there are examples of ways in which people are seeking to fill the emptiness in their lives. Sometimes they try drugs. Sometimes they try sex. Sometimes they try working 14 hours a day. They spend more money than they make, buying bigger and better toys. You know the list. Perhaps you can even add a few examples from your own life. I know I certainly can. But regardless of the specific example, it is significant to note that we do have the longing and we do continue to search for something which will fill the void. And the good news is that God is always there, all around us, waiting patiently to respond to our need. If we are open, if we will listen, if we will pause from the hectic pace of our lives, we will discover that God can and will and does fill the hole in our lives.

It was this longing for God even when he didn't know it which led the man with the demons to seek out Jesus. For most of us who have grown up immersed in a modern, rational way of perceiving the world, today's story from the Gospel of Luke leaves us uncomfortable or at least uncertain as to how to make sense of it. Jesus encounters a man who has been possessed by a legion of demons or unclean spirits. They have driven the man to live the most marginal existence, at the edge of the city in a graveyard. He frequently becomes uncontrollable and cannot even be contained with chains, shackles and guards.

We are not used to thinking in terms of demon possession and evil spirits. We are far more comfortable with concepts like mental illness and psychological disorders. In fact, that may be what was going on. There are scholars who believe that the demon possession of Jesus' day was simply a different explanation for what we now understand as some form of mental or emotional illness.

Quite frankly, I used to be a lot more concerned about such explanations than I am now. I have never personally been around anyone whom I believe was possessed by unclean spirits and I don't really know what it was that Jesus encountered there in the country of the Gerasenes. But what I do know is that Luke tells a story about Jesus demonstrating the power of God to overcome forces which were controlling, enslaving and destroying a man's life, and however one chooses to describe them, such forces are surely active in our world today. We may not call them demons or spirits, but we are all certainly aware of factors in our own lives and in the lives of those around us which exert damaging and painful control. Without even trying I can name such demons as loneliness, and disease, and fear, and selfishness, and hate, and prejudice, and alcoholism, and war, and crime, and poverty, and narrow mindedness and the list could go on and on. Think for just a moment about those things in your life which prevent you from experiencing the fullness and richness in your living which I believe we were created to enjoy. By whatever name you want to give it, we are familiar with the experience of being overwhelmed and controlled by forces beyond ourselves which leave us broken and empty and lost. Which is precisely what makes the gospel message such remarkably good news. This is a story about a man whose longing for God, even in the midst of unbelievable pain and suffering, led him to seek out healing from God. And what he found in the person of Jesus was an experience with God which was more powerful than anything else which might seek to lay claim to his life. Out of his emptiness, his longing found its fulfillment.

So, whether out of pain and emptiness, or in the midst of great joy, may we recognize our own longing for God. May we fall in love with the great Lover of all creation. May we be passionate and overwhelmed and completely immersed in a relationship with the One who is the fulfillment of all our desires.