Isaiah the prophet spoke to us about the tenderness of God’s love for us, like the love of a mother for the child of her womb, whom she can never forget. The Wisdom writer gives us an assurance of God’s great love for all created things. The Wisdom writer tells us, “For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!” Even when it seems to us that God has every right to be angry with us and that he has rejected us and that he even hates us, we see in his Word that he would never forget us, forsake us or hate us. God is not a hater, he is a great “lover of souls” and of all things great and small.
Julian of Norwich had a vision or “showing” of this great mystery once and she describes it: “And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God preserves it.” St. Elizabeth of the Trinity also has an experience of perspective in our relationship with God, “Deep calls unto deep. It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love.”
In the gospel of Luke, Zacchaeus, who thinks himself to be a big man, realizes his infinite smallness in the light of his encounter with Jesus. He is made aware of his infinite smallness but at the same time encounters the infinite mercy of God in Jesus. This changes Zacchaeus and he becomes a different person with a new perspective on life able to do great things with the blessings that God has bestowed upon him. We may be a small person like Zacchaeus, aware of the abyss of nothingness that characterizes our life, but we are able to do great things in light of the abyss of God’s infinite mercy and love. We need to allow Christ to remove whatever obstacle that separates us from God and allow ourselves to be changed into love. Big problems become little things in the merciful hands of God who is a lover of souls.