It’s February, Valentine’s Day. As usual I haven’t got a clue what to do. I am often compelled to watch what my son calls “chick flicks.” Now let’s be clear. I am not referring to X-rated movies but rather what Linda calls “romantic films.” I think that’s part of the problem. In my mind’s eye I want to mark this day of romance and love in a Hollywood kind of way. I think you know what I mean. Linda arrives at home after a hard day at the office (Linda is a homemaker) and as she drives down the cobblestone driveway (we have a muddy, dirt two-track) she finds a trail of red rose petals leading to the front door (all of ours are back doors).
Intrigued and with her emotions fully tweaked, she stretches her sensual, shapely, silk-clad legs (Linda has the legs but clads them in Stanfields and denim in February) out of the Mercedes sedan (we own a one-ton pickup truck) and begins to walk up the pathway (covered in a foot of snow that I haven’t yet shoveled) with her high heel shoes clicking in excitement (Linda only wears hiking boots in February). She opens the front door and the romantic sound of Mozart wafts gently towards her ears (Linda favours country music). She steps into the house on the path of rose petals and notices that the dining room (we have a table about two feet away from the kitchen sink) is elegantly laid for dinner with the best silver (we have stainless steel that rusts in the dishwasher) and English bone china (we have the real Chinese stuff). She flares her nostrils and smells the delightful smell of rosemary and lamb (I have trouble with ham and eggs). The smell of the rosemary and lamb is intermingled with the enticing odor of the long and slender, scented beeswax candles flickering in the centre of the table (all of our candles are stubby paraffin victims from the last power outage). The rest of the evening is censored, even in my imagination.
There is a parable in the Bible that says: “Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.” (Proverbs 5:18-19) Be thou ravished always with her love?
How does that work? Linda and I have been married for going on 41 years. And there always seems to be a gap, sometimes larger than others, between the experience of our love as I imagine it, and the experience of our love as I live it. How do you keep the love going over the long term? How do you maintain the romance and the passion?
My grandparents taught me a lot. They were married for a good long time and one day not long before Grandma passed away there was an event that has stuck with me as though it were yesterday. We were all gathered at an aunt’s house in Kimberly, B.C., for a dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma went upstairs to get dressed for the occasion, and somewhere between the bottom of the stairs and the top she got mixed up between dinner and the beach. Eventually she came down, dressed in a bathing suit, nylon stockings and high heels. We all laughed. Grandpa didn’t. His eyes were lit up with passion and romance as he turned to all of us and shushed us with the words: “Your mother is still a fine looking woman!” His eyes revealed a man who was always ravished with her love. I am convinced that it was the product of 50-odd years of the everyday; the everyday marital devotion accented with tea and toast in bed, the heel of the freshly carved Sunday roast and being the best turned out man in the crowd, always served up just for her.
“Be thou ravished always with her love.” How does that work? A lifetime of everyday devotion, that’s how it works. The love gurus of our age are all wrong. It’s not attained by imagining the unattainable or by fantasizing the impossible. It is by daily living out a life of devotion and commitment, or as the parable puts it, daily “rejoicing in the wife of your youth.” And believe me, I have much to rejoice in.
All this thinking about matrimonial romance reminds me of something that has come up in my Bible reading of late. Interestingly, the Bible speaks about our relation to God using wedded bliss as a metaphor on numerous occasions. Isaiah does it frequently – 54:5. Jeremiah does it even more often – 2:2. It’s the main theme driving Hosea’s work – 2:19. And the apostle Paul gets into the act as well – Ephesians 5:25. At one point in the rear end of scripture, the Risen Christ is speaking to his followers in Ephesus congratulating them on a life of great and costly religion. And then in the midst of all this it is as though he almost blurts out, “But you have forgotten your first love!” (Revelations 2:4; Webber’s translation). It seems to me that this is just another way of Christ crying, “Whatever else, be thou always ravished by my love!”
The amazing thought that is warming my heart this chilly February Valentine’s Day as I ponder how to be always ravished by Linda’s love, is that God wants me to be always ravished by His love, too. This phrase, “ravished by His love,” was a favourite one used by writers in the period of the Reformation and the Awakening to speak about the experience of God’s love. These writers were likely inspired by Proverbs (5:19) and Song of Solomon (4:9). They may also have been moved by The Confession of St. Augustine (9.10). At one point John Calvin writes: “To be brief, we must be sure of the infinite good that is done to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we may be ravished in love with our God and inflamed with a right affection to obey Him, and keep ourselves strictly in awe of Him, to honour Him with our thoughts, with all our affections and with all our hearts.” (Sermon 42 on Ephesians, John Calvin as Pastor, Teacher and Theologian, by R.C. Zachman.) Be always ravished by God’s love? How does that work. How does it work over a long time of faith? Well, it seems to me the analogy holds true from cover to cover. It does not come by imagining the unattainable or by fantasizing the impossible. It is by living out a life of devotion and commitment to God in the everyday stuff of life, or as the parable puts it, daily “rejoicing in the (saving God) of your (first faith).” And believe me,
I know I have much to rejoice in.
