A Romance Like None Other

"Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?" - Song of Songs 8:5

"My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." - Psalm 63:1

I was reading my daily John Eldredge excerpt email and he was talking about how John Wesley, from way back in the day, wrote about God as his Lover. And he even wrote a hymn about him being his Lover. And how today, Lover has been replaced with Savior or Lord in the hymn. True names of God, but not exactly what was meant. It's like replacing the two in Song of Songs with Master and Servant instead of Lover and Beloved. In today's world of post-enlightenment science, we tend away from thinking of our God as our Lover, instead prefering something less intimate, but still reserving his holiness. It's a way of keeping our fig leaves on, but at the same time not taking anything away from God's perfection. But it is, because it's taking away from his love for us. And God is love.

I like how Eldredge and Curtis wrote in The Sacred Romance that the chief end of man was to know God and enjoy knowing him forever. Today, that would be thought of as going down to the Christian bookstore and getting a book on God's attributes. Fail! Knowing God is what we will do forever in Heaven, but it will be like Adam knowing Eve intimately in the Garden. That's the knowing meant here with our God. He desires us. Yes, it's a great mystery. Paul even said that (Ephesians 5:32), but it's everything we've ever wanted or desired in our hearts, soul, bodies, and minds. It's all in him. The One who wants to be our Lover. He promises to give us a romance like none other in our lives. He wants to rock our world! And he will do it. That doesn't necessarily mean becoming an apostle and going overseas or handing out soup under the freeway (although those are certainly wonderful works of love and badly needed), it means he wants intimacy with us. He wants "us" time with us. The same intimacy, for those of you married, that you want with your spouse. Oneness. Physical intimacy is a shadow of what intimacy God desires with us. So is the sweet emotional and mental intimacy in marriage. It's all about oneness with our God, because only then do we worship him with all of our mind, soul, and strength which is the first commandment. God wants that between us and him. God wants us to desire him, to want him. And when we do, and we rejoice in his complete, bare love, we find ourselves getting our heart's desires by finally having our One True Love, the Perfect One everyone is searching for in this world who completes them in ways that no one can. The secret to that, is that it's God. And that's how marriage images our relationship with God. Both are a romance like none other in history, the present, or the future. It's forever and always with our Beloved Jesus Christ. And as we live in a spiritual desert, he can't wait to come and rescue us and take us home into the oasis of his love when we find ourselves in rapture in his arms in the clouds, at one perfect and stolen moment in time some day soon.