This Is What Love Looks Like

           How I would’ve loved being a fly on the wall during this grandpa/grandboy outing!* (Actually, I’ve never aspired to be a fly in any location, but for sake of this post? I’ll get germy and grow wings.) 

            Note the delight in both as they share sips from their sweet treat! It isn’t hard to imagine the depth of the love this grandpa has for this tot. We’ve known him numerous years now and witnessed a man who loves the Lord with all his heart and his family to the moon and back.

            Yep. This is what love looks like.

            Oh, how deeply I see the exchange of love between this elderly couple,** married as long as I’ve been alive. This moment captured by their granddaughter tells it all.

            These precious ones not only loved each other as they reached this near end of their union. They shared it 7 decades—both on USA soil and overseas in the roughest of existences.

            Yes, this is what love looks like.

            Soon after this photo was captured, the sweet lady, glancing into the eyes of her groom, entered Heaven’s Glory, but the love still lingers in the eyes and on the lips of her widower.

            Oh, my heart!

            I cannot imagine this scenario—where a father bends low to “touch” his baby daughter’s memorial stone*** because, well, it just didn’t all go as the couple thought it would. No baby to bring home. No nursery beautifully decorated. No memories taking root beyond the hospital walls where the family said good-bye.

            And, even in this deepest of grief in a plan tossed from joy to sorrow, this is what love

sometimes looks like.

            Love encompasses the length, depth, and breadth of all emotions and vast experiences. The height of love in the good moments equals the depth of grief with which it holds hands. And, like it or not—ready or not—this scenario hits us all.

            Life does.

            Love does too.

            Real love stretches, reaches, bends; but it’s hard to break. And in the 3 images I’ve shared with you today, you can see none would have chosen not to love, no matter what.    

            Even when it hurt…

            To the core.

            Jesus knows this kind of love. Proof? This Bible verse says it all:

“But God demonstrated His own love toward us,

in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8-9 NKJV

            Reached—while we were dirty and unlovely.

            Stretched—nailed to a cross.

            Bent—broken for us. Loving us in every situation of our humanness.

            The good, the bad, the ugly.

            Thank God we have His example of deep, deep love to teach us the way to love—even in the toughest times when, for us, it seems impossible.

            But Jesus isn’t just what love looks like…

            HE IS LOVE!

 

“O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,

Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love;

Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above.

 

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, spread His praise from shore to shore!

How He loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore!

How He watcheth o’er His loved ones, died to call them all His own;

How for them He intercedeth, watcheth o’ver them from the throne.

 

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best;

’Tis an ocean vast of blessing, ’tis a haven sweet of rest.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ’tis heav’n of heav’ns to me;

And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee.”

 

(from the Hymn, O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus by S. Trevor Francis, 1875, public domain)

 

A beautiful rendition of this hymn for you to give a listen:

Oh, The Deep Love of Jesus - Epic Version! - YouTube

 

#love #Valentine #Jesuslove #life&death

 

Photo credits (all used with permission):

      *Debbie Sisk

                  **Amber Stewart

                              ***Jill Chatfield