Velasquez Wedding

On May 25, 2012, my husband and I were married. We stood at the end of a long aisle of chairs filled with family and friends and lined with perfect little jars of peonies hanging by delicate lace. We professed our vows to one other. We promised to love for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. We promised to always put our love above any other earthly love. We promised to love each other today, tomorrow, and forever.

What is this love? I recently googled the word love and do you know how many results appeared on my screen within seconds? . . . 8,510,000,000. Have you ever thought about the fact that the majority of music we listen to is written on the topic of love? In fact, I read that there are records of 3500-year-old Egyptian love poems on pieces of papyrus and ancient pottery fragments. Those very songs are filled with the sentiments we still hear today. Anthropologist Helen Fisher said, “The drive to love has produced some of humankind’s most compelling operas, plays, and novels, our most touching poems and haunting melodies, the world’s finest sculptures and paintings, and our most colorful festivals, myths, and legends.”

There has always been a longing for love in every being and there always will be.

As my husband and I made vows to love one another truly and faithfully, I could not help but ponder the reality of the only perfect love—the only perfect love which enables me to love and be loved at all. 1 John 4:9 says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (esv).

The love of God was manifest to me through Jesus Christ. He has displayed a perfect love. A love that knows no height or depth, and nothing else in all creation will be able to separate us from that love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (esv).

In order for you and I to love our husbands, children, siblings, parents, friends, and anyone that we come into contact with, we must embrace and receive the love of Jesus Christ that we have inherited as daughters of the King of kings.

In and of myself, I cannot love fully. My love is tarnished and conditional. But, by God’s hand of grace and mercy I have inherited the perfect Love. I have been offered and have received the Love the world has been searching for.

Have you responded to this Love? Is there someone you know who needs this Love today? By the grace of God, go and give the love of Christ to a world in need.