Lover of my soul

Valentine’s Day again. A day so loaded with pent-up emotion – hopes and dreams, expectations and disappointments, fulfilment and loneliness. Why do we do this to ourselves? 

As I write this, a chainsaw roars away in the background as a local businessman clears the wood across the field from our house. It looks like a scene from World War 1. Devastation everywhere. A thick carpet of needles and pine cones, twigs and branches, nests and shelters lies dying on the ground while the curtain of trees is ripped and torn asunder. Now from my back door I have a clear view of – wait for it – a tank! No, not a water tank, but a weapon, decommissioned obviously and now used as part of the paint ball games which fan out across that area of ground and extend into the (still-standing) woods beyond. 

The toys for boys team bonding game which has developed over the last couple of decades within such close proximity to our rural idyll hasn’t bothered me – until now – because it has been muffled and sheltered by this thick insulating stand of trees. No longer.

Hey, wait a second, you may be asking yourself. How did I segue from a day celebrating love and relationships to the devastation wreaked by a chainsaw in the woods? 

There is a link. The devastation reminds me that so many relationships have fallen victim to cutting remarks, disapproving attitudes, selfish ambitions, and that this day can be a painful reminder to many of the beauty which once seemed so unassailable in their lives. Many today will be standing in the midst of an emotional battlefield left from such brokenness and dying hopes and dreams.

Nobody sets out on a love affair expecting it to end in pain and ugly emptiness, and yet so many loves are abandoned and left to wither and shrivel. More today than ever before? I think maybe today people are more ready to give up and walk away from something when it hits a challenging moment, rather than working through it and finding the relationship strengthened as a result.

The trouble with a day like Valentine’s Day is that it can rob a person of a right perspective. And what is the ‘right’ perspective?

I believe it is that no matter what your circumstances are today, Jesus Christ is the divine lover of your soul. That is an amazing truth. The Creator of the universe looks at you and loves you, warts and all. There is nothing you have done which can spoil his love for you; there is always another chance with Jesus, always an opportunity to draw near again and let his embrace soothe your fears and sense of loneliness. He never walks away from his relationship with you; he never gives up on it, even though for him it has seemed unrequited for a long, long time. Still he stands at the door of your heart and knocks, hoping you will open your heart and invite him in.

His Valentine to you today is the brilliance of a rainbow, the fragrance of a lily, the rosy streaks of a glorious sunrise or sunset, the laughter of a child, the words of love he whispers through the Bible, just to you. 

That devastation in the woods across the field will soon sprout with new life beneath the compost of life that once lived and now is cut down. Seeds of hope; seeds of promise and love.  If your heart feels devastated and dead, look closer. Seeds of love are there, sprouting. Nurture them.

‘I have loved you with an everlasting love,’ God says. 

And if God is for you, what more do you need? Jesus is the lover of your soul and mine, yesterday, today and forever.That's reality, not a pipe dream.

Get the eternal perspective, and catch the fragrance of his heavenly presence. Take time to linger and breathe in his love, allowing it to reach right down to the places that feel dry and dessicated and which nothing else seems to reach.

Happy Valentine’s Day!