Beauty from Ashes

It’s all about the Great Romance. This one nothing and no other is our heart, is what we were created for, what we were made to live and to die for. This one thing and no other. If only I could get ahold of that, truly internalize it and comprehend it, what would it change? How would it turn my life upside down…if I truly knew that love?

This love story is what all of history points to; from creation, where we were made to love, to the cross, where Christ gave us back the ability to fully love and know His love again,  to the coming marriage supper of the Lamb, beginning our eternity as His beloved bride. The Great Romance is everything…because not only is it the only message of all of the world’s history, it is each story individually. Your story. My story. The story of your best friend and the story of your worst enemy. The story of someone who means the world to you, and the story of the person who broke your heart. All unique, yet with a common thread running through each one.

It is a love story beyond imagining, the most beautiful one that could ever be. It is the story of a God who made us to love Him, one who is the greatest lover of all. One who made us because He longs for us to love Him…because our love is so valuable to Him that He would not force it, but wanted us to choose to love Him freely.

His love is passionate, desperate, beyond reason and beyond measure. We are—I am—His dream come true. That’s a really strange thought for me. So often I see myself as not good enough and not worthy of love, but the one who is love perfected disagrees. He is so crazy in love with me that He pursued me when I rejected His love, turned my back on Him, and broke His heart.

He had no obligation to chase after me and try to recapture my heart. But it was never about obligation. He was a lover heartbroken that His beloved had run from Him…a bridegroom heartbroken because His precious bride had chosen another and rejected His love.  But instead of leaving, giving up, and being angry, as He had more than every right to do, He ran after me. He pursued His beloved to the gates of hell and back again. He fought and won against death itself—all for my love. How could any love story be greater or anything more romantic than that?

For my love. The one thing He was desperate for, and the one thing He would not and will not compel. This one thing and no other. His heart and His greatest desire is for His love to be returned. That I will taste and see that His love is good, and not choose any other over Him. That I will see that I have captured His heart and won His love, and give Him mine in return. He is a jealous lover who will let no other take His place in my heart—but He is my more than enough.

I can’t quite get the words to say what I want them to; there is no way I could even begin to describe His love, and His desire for my love, for your love, for the love of each and every person He has created. It seems so fundamental. Of course a lover would desire to be loved in return. But when the thought first struck me that not only does God love us, but His greatest desire is for us to love Him and return His love, it stopped me in my tracks. That made His love real to me in a way I had never seen it before, and it is this one thing and no other that sums everything up: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. And we love Him because He first loved us.