“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” Song of Sol. 7:10
Lord Jesus, by the Gregorian Calendar, today is Valentine’s Day—a day set aside for celebrating the gift of romantic love. When it comes to romance, our stories are marked by the vulnerability of attraction and the naïveté of infatuation. Then throw in corresponding portions of wonder and disaster, make up and heartbreak, fun and fiasco, deep connecting and “it’s never enough.”
All love whispers, hints, and points to a greater love—the greatest love. On the Calendar of Grace, every day is the perfect day for remembering and reveling in the widest, highest, deepest and longest love imaginable—your great love for us, Jesus (Eph. 3:14-19). No human relationship or storybook romance, torrid love affair or the healthiest marriage imaginable, can give us what we only find in you.
You are the ultimate Spouse—the one we always dreamt about, longed for, and hoped we’d find (Eph. 5:25-32). Every human marriage is temporary; only marriage to you is forever. In fact, as believers, we are already more married to you, Jesus, than we will ever be to a human spouse (2 Cor.11:2-3). Make this real to us—deeply satisfying, wondrously freeing, utterly transforming.
Nothing compares with being able to say, “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me”—with you as the “beloved,” Jesus, and us are the “desired” ones. Until we join you face to face at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, may your love inhabit, shape, and fuel all other loves. So Very Amen.