Today’s essay is aptly entitled, “The Distance” and is written by Simone Weil. Simply, yet with enriching beauty Weil casts the picture of the great distance between the Holiness of God and evil of the Cross. The only thing that can bridge that distance is God’s defining characteristic, love. The distance showed our need, for God to come to us. The crucifixion openly displays the love of God that has indeed come to us. In reading I was reminded of the lyric from the song “Living Hope” that was in our worship last week. The line says “how great the chasm that lay between us, How high the mountain we could not climb.” It is the realization of the great distance between humanity and God that we begin to realize the “height and depth” of His love. As we are literally distanced from one another may we know this for Weil, “God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love….. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances.”