Ed Burns lost his wife just a year ago. He told me of the time when they first met. He saw her across the room one night when he was out for dinner with friends. The moment that he laid eyes on her, there was this electricity. “Who is that woman with the beautiful blue eyes?” he asked his friend. He insisted that they were introduced and he asked her out on a date. That was the beginning of relationship that would last a lifetime. That was the night that he met his soul mate, the night that changed everything.
When I met my husband, it was love at second sight. The first time I met him, he hadn’t slept the night before. He had dark circles under his eyes and he hadn’t shaved. I passed him over and felt nothing. But then he came to see my in an opera and I spoke to him after the performance. There was this electric moment. I looked at him, and I thought, “Is this the one?”
Love often begins with electric moments and love often alters both parties. Love changes you. When I met my husband, everyone called me Katherine. He started calling me Kate. Even my name changed! I became a better person, because I wanted to be worthy of him. I wanted to me the person that he saw in me. I became more myself and so much stronger.
In the movie As Good as it Gets, Jack Nickolson gives this stunning performance as a man who is nuts, eccentric, obsessive-compulsive and selfish. This man falls in love with a waitress and in order to be with her, he realizes that he is going to have to get healthy. She simply will not tolerate his craziness. One night, they are sitting at dinner and he is rattling on about something nuts and she says to him, “Can’t you just say one nice thing to me?” And this is what he comes up with:
You make me a better man.
At the end of the movie, he proceeds to explain to her why she must be with him. “I may be crazy,” he says, “But I am the only man who knows that you are the most amazing person on this planet, that everything you say is straight and honest and true. I’m proud of myself, because I see you.”
When John the Baptist meets Jesus in the River Jordan, it is an electric moment. They are both so in love with God and both know that something is about to happen. Both seem to know that this encounter will change their lives. You can feel the electricity. John finds himself face to face with the One, the One who he has been waiting for, the man who will change everything, the Messiah. In this moment, John is the first person to actually see Jesus, to recognize who he really is. It is a moment of truth, a moment of recognition. John finds himself tongue-tied. This loud man who has been screaming about repentance finds himself unsure of what to do. Even though he has been baptizing people like crazy, suddenly he is not so sure if he is supposed to do this. “Shouldn’t you be baptizing me?” he asks. And Jesus assures him that no, this is the way that it is supposed to go. John is to baptize Jesus.
And in that moment as they bend down towards the water together, God is present, just as God was present when Ed Burns first saw his wife, just as God was present when I spoke to my husband. God came in that electric moment of recognition and God told the truth about Jesus.
This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
If you and I want to discover the fullness of who we really are, we need to fall in love with God. Romantic love between persons is just a reflection of that, the greatest love, the love of God. When we are baptized, a love story begins between God and each one of us. Whenever I see a child or adult come up out of those waters, I think to myself, “What is God going to do with this person?” and “What is this person going to do with God?”
You are a child of God. To be fully known, you must fall in love the Maker of all. Only then will you find the purpose for which you were created.
