Happy Valentines Day, From Kristen
God's love is the greatest.
“The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn’t that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?” -Henri Nouwen
I’ll never forget the day when our 3-year-old daughter looked with great interest at me and John’s framed wedding photo. It was sitting atop a table in our home, and our daughter seemed to notice it, as if for the first time.
In the picture my husband John and I are running across the golf course where our wedding reception took place in New Jersey, and it’s early springtime. We look carefree and giddy, with the wind blowing my veil around and a goofy grin stretched across his face.
Chin in hand, my little one looked up at me with furrowed brows, “What are you wearing in this picture, mom?” she asked.
“That’s my wedding dress,” I explained. “That’s the day me and daddy decided to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“Oh,” she said, ever the contemplative. “So then you went trick-or-treating afterwards?”
I burst out laughing. It was pretty much true. Yes, our first year of marriage was a rollercoaster, full of tricks and treats and twists and turns that I could never have predicted in my wildest dreams. But because my husband and I saw in each other our inherent goodness, our Belovedness, and because we were willing to face our pain honestly and move through it as Christ did when he died for us on the Cross, resurrection happened.
New life happened.
What if we imagined our lives—and not just marriages but all relationships—as training grounds for moving in the direction of, growing in, our potential to manifest God’s divine love—the love of Jesus Christ our Savoir?
“Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love,” explains Father Richard Rohr.
We can read about God’s love in the Word, and the Bible is always a great place to start for direction and contemplation in our lives. But we learn to love the way God does by means of lived experience, by trial-and-error. Our relationship with God and with other people is nothing if not felt.
The love of God that we aspire to as Christians is a love so deep that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
When we know we are beloved by God, we can receive and nurture that same gentle, yet incredibly powerful feeling inside of ourselves. This is the Holy Spirit at work. We have to love our own person, to treat our own soul and body with kindness and respect, if we can ever hope to do that for others. The “daily bread” that Christ calls us to receive in the Lord’s Prayer is a discipline for returning to divine love and nourishment on a regular basis. This is a central way we grow in our faith, hope, and love.
Filled with this eternal, and always accessible substance from God, “food that does not spoil,” (John 6:27) we can do the work of the Cross—both individually and collectively—which is to move through suffering and transform pain into abundant life. To move through suffering as Christ did means to hold space for and face the misery, and also to move towards the hope that is to come, transforming tears into laughter. This is not a process of going around or denying pain, but rather, with eternal courage, walking straight through it into resurrection.
In this way we can be a part of building the Kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We can do it here and now, we can do it today.
And so, upon entering into this very American holiday, this Valentines Day weekend, I want to offer you the greatest of all love, a Peanuts card from Hallmark. Just kidding! But I would send you each one if I could. 😊
What I truly want to offer you is the greatest love of all, from our Creator. I want to offer you the Word, these truths written in Scripture. My prayer is that you will take these words inside your very being, and that you will sit with them, that you will recite them out loud, allowing your actual body and soul to feel what God says to you, what God has always said to you, since the beginning of time, knowing you in the very personal and very real way that God does:
“I have called you by name, from the very beginning (1) You are mine and I am yours (2). You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb (3). I have carved you in the palms of my hands (4) and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. (5) I have counted every hair on your head (6) and guided you at every step (7). Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch (8). I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you (10). You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me.
Nothing will ever separate us.
1 from Isaiah 43
2 Song of Solomon 6.3
3 from Psalm 139
4 Isaiah 49.16
5 1 Thessalonians 2.7
6 Matthew 10.30
7 Proverbs 16.9
8 Psalm 121.4
9 Psalm 81.10, 16
10 Psalm 27
Additional Sources:
The Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen, p. 30. Crossroad Publishing.
The Holy Bible, New International Version
The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr, p. 71. Convergent Books.
“Beloved, A Much Loved Person.” http://www.allaboutgod.net/profiles/blogs/beloved-a-much-loved-person