With All Your Might
Love God with your me'od...
Love the Lord with all your might.
So far, we have explored the ideas of heart and soul.
Loving God with your heart requires all of you and calls you to give your emotions, will, and desires to Him.
Loving God with your soul matters because you are an embodied person, and the way you live matters to who you are.
And today, we look at the idea of loving the Lord with all of your might or strength.
Might/Strength?
What do you picture when you think of strength?
Is it this?
Honestly, one of the craziest things in the world to me is watching people pull trains or lift giant stones. I am not a frail person, but I am definitely not a bodybuilder or professional strongman. And yet, these amazing feats of strength inspire a level of awe in me. They have a certain unattainability that mesmerizes me.
But Deuteronomy 6 is not talking about physical strength when it commands us to love God with all of our strength or might.
In fact, that translation is leaving a lot to be desired in the idea that it is conveying. There is some heavy lifting (lol) to do when it comes to crossing the linguistic divide between what is going on in the underlying text and what is happening in English.
Because the word used in the Hebrew here for “might” or “strength” is me’od.
Me’od doesn’t mean might or strength at all. It means “much” or “very.”
As in…
There was “much” rejoicing at the announcement that school was cancelled because of snow.
Or…
The boy was “very” upset that he couldn’t have any more fruit snacks.
In both cases, you could just use the descriptive word…
Me’od is a modifier. It extremifies (not a word) whatever it’s subject is.
It takes a description and turns the dial from 5 to 10. Where there was happiness, there is now exuberance. Where someone was annoyed, they are now irate. Where a snag had been hit, there is now a full-on stoppage.
Me’od doesn’t exist. But it amplifies existence.
So why is this strange word the thing that Moses latches onto as the final idea for the way that we should love God?
We should love God with our “muchness”?
What does that even mean?
Muchness as Worship
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The Weight of Glory - C.S. Lewis)
C.S. Lewis does a splendid job of summing up what Moses is saying.
The things that we desire are merely tools for accessing the infinite and abundant joy offered to us in relationship to our Creator.
We were made to interact with the world around us and that world is a world of reciprocal action. We desire things, use and enjoy them, and are shaped by them in return.
And if we fail to see the greater picture of the “things,” we will never understand the One behind them.
Food and drink are designed to teach us joy and dependence.
Sex is designed to teach us covenant love and faithfulness.
Work is designed to teach us diligence and passion.
Everything has a purpose. Nothing is an end in itself. Each and everything is a means towards some other end, either towards God or away from Him.
Through the “objects” of creation, we are invited to a relationship with the Subject of Creation, the One who made it all and made us for Himself.
That is why our muchness is so powerful and important to God. It is worship to go beyond the physical and find the presence of God in the ordinary of what is in front of us.
We don’t love God by getting lost in loving the things in front of us. We love Him through loving the things in front of us and recognizing the ways that all of these things point us ultimately to Him.
So love the Lord your God with everything. In the mundane and the ordinary.
This is how the minutes of time (chronos) become the moments of life (kairos).
And I think you’ll be shocked at how your life could transform if you decided to love God with your muchness.
Shema
This is the call to love God, at least in the big picture. But Moses doesn’t leave us empty for what that looks like day to day.
We will soon explore the practical solutions that Moses provides to ensure this tall task doesn’t fall to the wayside.
Stay tuned!
Love the Lord, friends, with your whole heart.