Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God

‘Morning glory, starlit sky, soaring music, scholar’s truth, Flight of swallows, autumn leaves, memory’s treasure, grace of youth. Open are the gifts of God, gifts of love to mind and sense; Hidden is love’s agony, love’s endeavour, love’s expense.’ These words conclude one of the most influential and best-loved spiritual books of the twentieth century. Nearly forty years after its first publication, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense remains transforming and compelling. William H. Vanstone explores the nature and cost of authentic love, distinguishing it from destructive imitations, and he reflects on the precarious activity of God in creation, the ‘sublime self-giving’, which is the ground and source and origin of the universe’ and which requires the Creator to wait upon the response to his creation. The late Canon W. H. Vanstone also wrote The Stature of Waiting and Fare Well in Christ.