I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Happy New Year, Dear Reader! How are you doing? Everybody okay out there? I’m hoping you made it through the overwhelming Holiday season with more joys than sorrows, with more friends than riches, and with more wisdom than pure intellectual prowess.
Here we are just on the heels of the December white elephant exchanges and somehow, some way, the expectation of chocolate and flowers starts to give us all the romantic feels.
As I recap my wonderful Christmas season, I remembered what my tribe has lovingly come to know as The Great Ornament Exchange. My friends Doug and Debbie have been doing this even before there was a Debbie, when there was only a Doug. No matter where I lived throughout the last 30 or so years, I received a card in the mail inviting me to the annual yuletide gathering. We always tried to connect in years when I could not attend. This year, the card came signed from the two lovebirds and I was so excited for the upcoming tradition and to see my friends. I had no doubt that we would gather around the piano and sing carols, laugh, and eat the best cheese dips and fudge on planet earth.
On the week of the event, I was short on time therefore I pulled a new beautiful glass ornaments that resembled a piece of red fruit from a collection I was going to personally use. Without much thought, I felt compelled to write in cursive on a little card and attach it to the bag: I am my Beloved’s and he is mine.
Once I arrived at the party, a man picked up my gift as his choice for white elephant and read the words aloud. Don’t get too excited, for this was no Hallmark ending though it would have made for a really great story if he would have been my one. When he opened my ornament which I had only ever overlooked as just fruit, without hesitation he stated, “Oh! It’s a pomegranate!”
The next morning I remembered my little verse and the glass ornament then I realized how closely the pomegranate was linked to the very passage of Song of Solomon that says the same words I wrote on the card. I am my Beloved’s and he is mine. Solomon wrote those magnificent words for his woman, likening her temples behind the veil to halves of a pomegranate. I imagined his depths of devotion in this lovely declaration of commitment between the two as a metaphor for God’s personal pursuit of us as a bridegroom seeking after his own bride. I remembered Doug’s famous bachelorhood coming to a screeching halt when he met Debbie, now his wife of many years. Back then, I felt honored to sing in their wedding and to see them grow together as a married couple. And of course, I thought of all my single friends called to marriage who are constantly reminding each of how the Lord is a husband to the one with none.
God’s pursuit of His Beloved is also reflected in the story of a man God used named Hosea. He continued to run after his wayward woman who had a very odd girl name of Gomer. Wherever Gomer was found, even in her shame, he purchased her back with his money, but more importantly with his steadfast love. Have you ever loved someone so much that no matter what they did to you or to bring shame to their own life that you ran after them and brought them back home, so to speak? That was the kind of love Hosea showed to Gomer and that is the kind of love that God has for His own. It is an unwavering display of bleeding heart commitment in spite of her running after all things that sparkled, fantasies of her own design, and running into all of the swankiest parties in her most alluring clothing.
It is the Lord who gives Hosea the wherewithal to walk the painful and costly journey of Gomer’s redemption, an impossible ask. Hosea’s life is a picture of Christ’s redemption of mankind with this, the ultimate act of selfless love.
At almost every wedding I have attended, the passage from 1 Corinthians 13 was presented. Otherwise it is known as the familiar love chapter containing a collection of “love is” statements that often end up on plaques in someone’s kitchen or penned into Valentine’s Day cards. In the case of Hosea, we see that love is not self-seeking. We also see that love is patient, one of the aspects of love that is also known as a fruit of the Spirit.
Somewhere between the Christmases and the Valentine’s moments of relationships, there is certain grind that rivals a bitter January. These moments require a patient love that does not demand anything we do not willingly want to offer, rather, it is a love that allows us to love not only the unlovable, but also the undeserving since we ourselves are so undeserving. Not every love is a mutually giving one like my friends Doug and Debbie or Solomon and his Shulammite woman. Sometimes we are called to be a Hosea.
The most difficult to love person can see Christ in us when we show patient love to them. Who do you know that is a Gomer in your life that needs your patient love? Are you stuck in the relationship doldrums like a bitter January day somewhere between Christmas and Valentine’s Day? Perhaps, you just do not know how you, yourself, are going to make it through much less how to give from your own resources to those whose presence makes life challenging? As we gear up toward even a silly manufactured holiday about love, let’s count all the ways in which we have been shown love when we ourselves did not deserve it. Let’s gear up to make it more than a Hallmark card somewhere between Christmas and Valentine’s Day. A patient love will not grow weary and will produce a harvest just when we least expect it.
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