Sermon Illustrations

Love God like Loving a Cow?

Meister Eckhart: Some people want to love God in the same way as they love a cow. You love it for the milk and the cheese and for your own profit. So do those who love God for the sake of outward riches or inward consolation. But they do not love God correctly, for they merely love their own advantage.

Meister Eckhart says we are looking for something along with God, and behaving exactly as if we were making of God a candle to look for something. When we find the things we are looking for, we throw the candle away. Whatever we seek along with God is nothing. It does not matter what it is - be it an advantage or a reward or a kind of spirituality or whatever else - we are seeking a ‘nothingness’, and for this reason we find a ’nothingness’.