Today is Valentine’s Day.
My Instagram feed is flooded with photos and videos of couples and gifts and flowers and all sorts of expressions of love.
I’m sure yours is, too.
And that’s great. I mean, I post plenty of sappy posts of my hubby and me. But what I love most about the love of my husband is that it reflects the love of God. And that’s the love for which we all really long.
I went through a long season of singleness {one might call it a wilderness}, and I can tell you now, on the other side of marriage, that no man will ever make you feel complete except the One perfect Man who ever lived {and I married a pretty dang near perfect one!}
No love of this earth will ever fill us like the love of the God who created it.
No marriage will ever satisfy the true longing of our hearts except that which is to come. {See Revelation 21: us as bride; Christ as Bridegroom}.
If you are in the wilderness of singleness, what a fabulous day to be there! Today is Ash Wednesday, and the first day of Lent–a 40 day stretch in which we enter a wilderness by voluntarily ridding our lives of something all for the very purpose of drawing us nearer to Christ.
And just as we have hope in the midst of the wilderness in the promise of what is to come at its end–Easter! The resurrection! Life eternal!–so we have hope in seasons of wilderness {of singleness or anything else} because of what God has made possible through that very cross.
This Valentine’s Day, would all the love that surrounds and fills {and invades!} point us back and up and toward the love of the true Lover of our souls, who loves us with a jealous and passionate and fiery love.
Thanks be to Him who loves us so dearly, so fully, and so perfectly–that He would send His Son to live on this earth, to be tempted and tried as we, to die the most brutal and excruciating death on a cross all so that we could have a restored relationship with Him in our lives here on this earth and have the hope of the complete fulfillment of that union with Him to come in eternity.
Today I am grateful for the gift of my long-awaited husband and for the ways in which he loves me so well. But more than that I’m grateful for the Giver of the greatest gift of all, our true Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. {And that Clay’s love simply leads me closer to Him and shows me a glimpse into His love.}
Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! Whether you’re single, dating, engaged or married, my prayer is that we would all know who we are and whose we are today–Beloved, His.
“Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” – Revelation 21:9