Epistle to lovers

This is an article I wrote in January of 2009, I got a lot of positive responses and rereading it lately, I have found that I still believe most of what I wrote (though some ideas are less clear now and others clearer, and I have changed much since I wrote it). Consider this the first entry into my book of vagabond doctrine, in the chapter called romance:

January 5, 2009

This note is dedicated to all those dear people who have found a person to whom they can dedicate the energy of the rest of their lives to help perfect before the throne of God.

This author has to admit that this subject first took shape in his mind while browsing facebook status’. A look at the status’ of a few friends never fails to find me at least one sentence such as “so-and-so is totally obsessed with So-and-so and wishes he/she was here” or “I couldn’t be happier, there is nothing better than being with So-and-so right now”.

I am quite the lover-boy myself, I fall in love almost too often. I am a seeker of beauty and so when romance can be applied with sensitivity and grace and quiet adoration is given a moment to overwhelm any distraction – I am content. However I am also a seeker of truth and so when I entertain thoughts like these or view outcries of emotion as in these statuses, the truth strikes my fluttering heart like a red hot poker simultaneously. Survival mode kicks in and I know instantly that there is something dreadfully wrong with this sort of unbridled adoration…

It would be untruthful of me to be in the pretence of not being affected by this high affinity for companionship. I believe without much doubt that this longing is extremely common among young adults today. However they wouldn’t be wrong to be longing in this way. I think that to some degree; It is this period of a person’s life that God so designed in the hope of securing beautiful families with the purpose of ensuring a lasting covenant of faithful belief and following of Himself. Ultimately, God wants us to raise our children as stewards of His children. He hopes and waits for the time when our children will become His, through the adoption justified by Jesus.

So I realise the terrifying intension of companionship.

In a world so obsessed with God (one can see this obsession if one’s eyes are opened to see), so aimed toward the glorification of an “immaculate Messiah who wants your whole life and expects you to give it”, can one hardly be surprised when it is suggested that this extreme focus on God and His covenant of grace applies to companionship too? Surely one can realise that we are truly supposed to be a God consumed people. A people that were created for that purpose and will not be satisfied until that purpose is fully lived.

I have a friend who studies people. In fact I study people myself, the easiest subject of my recreational studies being myself. People are complex creations created as vessels and filled so far beyond biology with emotion, feeling, thought; filled with so much humanity that this humanity explodes out of them into literary expressions of emotion in poetry and prose, often into song and melody, lyrics and compositions, brush-strokes and sketches, in such moments of inspiration even drawn out silences become infused with passion so thick it can warm the skin like a thick winter coat.

God had all of this in mind when He designed His system of companionship. His system of perfect union of man and woman, husband and wife. God knows his favourite creation intimately. As a carpenter knows every groove in the great table he’s been carving away for months so much more does God know His great object of unselfish love. He knows it from when it was only a thought in His mind, a glorious picture that would cost so much to bring into existence that only He could fathom it, He knows the extent to which He was willing to sacrifice in deciding to make it a reality, and he knows the glory it shall express in the end of the end. When all things come to completion and the picture becomes fully expressed for all who formed a part of it to see.

We find that young adulthood is the time most saturated with emotion and passion. I believe that God intended no coincidence when He planned for such desperate emotion to occupy the same time frame as this far spread longing for companionship. Our Lord is utterly sovereign and in His world and His people that are so foundationally, intrinsically (but deniably) Christocentric, nothing can be ascribed to chance and no experience can be assigned to chaotic evolution. Our greatest passion and most prominent longing can become intertwined if only we will allow it it’s proper timing. Long before He formed us in the womb, our Father in Heaven decided on the path that our lives should take to most glorify Himself through fulfilling the purpose He designed us with. If we trust Him as is natural when we recognise Him for who He is, we must present ourselves as subject to His ways and regulations in everything. Especially companionship in this time of our lives.

Slow down. We must pace ourselves. Let us bring to God the glory that we long too, as He deserves.

He will glorify Himself with power and majesty as any great King is able to do but to take up our cross in submissive reverence for His statutes will enable Him to bring glory to us in chorus. His glory is His focus and our happy companionship could not be more glorious in that it pictures that very image from the mind of God before creation: the image of Jesus and the Church, that image of unselfish sacrifice in the hope of an unbreakable covenant. The companionship in the mind of God contains more beauty then what minds less then God’s can grasp yet in His design of humanity: emotion, feeling, thought, passion – in this design He allows us rather to experience it.

Hear me lovers: God is whom you glorify in your companionship. And your companionship is what God beautifies so as to sanctify you in more Godly glory. Never forget what your purpose is in companionship and strive for that grace, love, humility and sanctity that accompanies any such image of Jesus and the Church. Great responsibility rests on those whom He has chosen to place into companionship. Only people truly committed into the changing process of boy to man, girl to woman can bring glory to God in the way that He has ordained and called companionship. So seek, oh you seeker of love with all your soul for the God who will make you able to bring Glory to His name, and to His covenant through your companionship.

Greetings to the saints. I hope to find companionship in this glorious image of Jesus’ covenant with the church soon. Till then, in pain of sanctification I present my prayers for them already on this road to God my Redeemer.