Ephesians 3:17-19
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
Have you ever wondered how many times the word “love” appears in the Bible? In the King James Version, we can find it over 300 times. That’s a lot of instruction on how to love! Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary, 57 years of marriage. I have a whole lot of love for my husband—much more than on the day we exchanged vows—and have expressed it in many ways, besides words, over these many decades.
In recent years the vow, “to love in sickness and in health” has come to have deeper implications for me, even as recently as this month when I suffered from a serious ear infection and vertigo. Without his strong arms and steadiness, I would not have been able to stand, let alone walk, and he helped to meet my every need until the medicines took effect. His dependable care was key to my recovery from hip replacement surgery twelve years ago, a period when everything I did was dependent on his help. The experience reminded me of the title of a sermon I heard many years ago, “Dependence Breeds Love.“ The teaching was in the context of having a dependent heart that trusts and follows after God. But those words had a profound impact on my views and actions in our marriage.
Being married to a man who spent years away from home, deployed with the Navy, and on travel for his company, I learned to become a very independent person, managing the home, raising the children, and eventually running a business. With surgery that left me unable to care for myself, I reluctantly became dependent on my husband. During the months of recovery, my love for him began to grow from that dependence on him, as did my trust in him for my care.
It’s the same in our relationship with the Lord. The more dependent we are the more we will love Him and trust in His care for us, the more we will want to spend time with Him, asking for His guidance, inclining our ears to hear His voice. Independence from Him diminishes that love. Peter Marshall, the Scottish theologian who pastored the US Senate said this, “Have you ever given thought that God, the lover of our souls, Who is love, Who graciously gives love to hungry hearts—that God Himself is the “Great unloved?” How could we not love the God Who gave His own Son that we might live, but is reviled and ridiculed by many? May we understand anew that our dependence on Him breeds a love inexpressible, a love incomparable, a love beyond all measure.
Heavenly Father, thank you for Your beautiful expression of love— sending Jesus to die and to be raised from the grave so we may know how wide, long, high, and deep Christ’s love is for us. Remind us daily that dependence on You produces more love for You and increases our capacity to love others as well. Bring to our hearts and minds how to love one another, to put the welfare of others ahead of our own. May we be a reflection of Your perfect love today. We pray in Your name, Amen.
~ painting from the Macneil Studio
