Love Letters

I met my husband over Christmas break of my freshman year of college. We met in Sunday School in the college and careers class. I knew who he was because he has younger sisters but I’m fairly certain he didn’t know me until that Christmas. We went on one date before I returned to school for the spring semester.

Pre-cell phone, personal computers and email, I wrote him a letter to thank him for our movie date. He returned my note. We knew very little of each other so we shared simple details in those letters. He was a senior and I was a freshman. Our work and class schedules were intermingled with our hopes and dreams. The day I arrived home for summer break, he was there waiting to help me unpack. After Hurricane Hugo, he helped clear limbs and debris from my parents’ yard. Moments stand out in my mind of our courtship and engagement, but our letters are at the heart of our relationship.

Throughout our 30 year marriage, I’ve continued writing to my husband. Notes left for him each morning led to journals filled with my love and prayers for him. Not always, but in seasons. He is my first reader now as I compose my blog. The thing about the written word that I love most is the thought that goes into it. Email and text have taken our thought processes while writing and condensed them into mere sound bytes, often impulsively rendered. This short cut cheapens our words and steals their lasting impact. After almost 33 years, I still have the correspondence between my husband and I. The letters are a treasure capturing a part of ourselves worth knowing.

I have a similar love for God’s Word. Scripture captures moments in my faith history that I would not know had they not been recorded for me. God’s story is my story! I am created in His image to display His glory. “In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for His own glory.” (Isaiah 61:3b)

“But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.”

2 Timothy 3:14-17 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/2ti.3.14-17.NLT

“Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.”

2 Peter 1:20-21 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/2pe.1.20-21.NLT

The Bible is not mine alone. It is God’s love letter to all who would believe, trusting in His provision for salvation through Jesus Christ. Conversely, there is only One for Whom I write. As much as I love my husband, he would be the first to tell you that my love is grounded in my love for God in Christ. Only when I love Him first and best can I love as I am loved. “As we live in God, our love grows more perfect.”

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.

This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

We love each other because he loved us first.”

1 John 4:7-12, 19 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/1jn.4.7-19.NLT

Thank You, Heavenly Father, for Your expression of Your perfect love through your Word and through Your Son. Empower me to love like You love so that the world may know You. In Jesus’s name. Amen.