Love For A Lifetime

Last evening we savored the joy of witnessing wedding vows for two precious friends. Encircled by beautiful young women in mint green dresses and handsome young men in white shirts and black vests, they held hands and promised to love each other for the rest of their lives. 

It has been forty years since Ron and I made the same promise to each other. Long before we had any idea what our life together would become. And by God's grace, our vows have stood the test of time, through difficult seasons and idyllic ones alike. As I watch my hair slowly turn from brown to gray, I pray fervently for many more years together. I think I am getting the hang of being married now, and it doesn't seem fair somehow that more years surely lie behind us than ahead.

Louie, Ron's best friend from high school days (and best man at our wedding), gave us a plaque for a wedding gift. He had it inscribed with these words from Robert Browning:

     Grow old along with me!
     The best is yet to be,
     the last of life, for which the first is made.

I remember being both surprised and pleased with this gift which still graces our wall, for I did not know him well. He is a brilliant, taciturn man who has remained single his whole life, still working on his family's farm. Ron drives out to visit him there when he returns to his hometown from time to time. Louie's sister coaxed him on a trip to visit us once in San Diego, many years ago. I enjoyed our conversations immensely and came to respect his quiet intellectuality and sense of humor.

Recently, while enjoying a collection of Ruth Bell Graham's poetry, I found a piece to pass on to the newly wed couple. Born in China to missionary parents, Ruth's dream was to become a missionary herself, taking the gospel of Jesus to one of the farthest reaches in the world, Tibet. After meeting and courting the young Billy Graham at Wheaton College, she wrestled in prayer and finally decided that instead of serving as a single missionary, her life would be bound up with Billy's passion for evangelism.

When they began being separated for long periods of time due to his travel, Ruth convinced Billy to move them to Montreat, North Carolina, to be near her parents. There she built the family homestead, raised five children and had a flourishing ministry in the mountains of western North Carolina even as she supported her husband's world-wide ministry.

Ruth went home to her Lord at the age of eighty-seven. I hope you, too, will delight in this, one of her early love poems.


     Train our love
     that it may grow
     slowly... deeply... steadily;
     till our hearts will overflow
     unrestrained and readily.

     Discipline it too,
     dear God;
     strength of steel
     throughout the whole.
     Teach us patience, 
     thoughtfulness, 
     tenderness, and 
     self-control.

     Deepen it
     throughout the years, 
     age and mellow it
     until, time that finds us
     old without,
     within,
     will find us 
     lovers still.

He Gave Us Himself

                            And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, 
                            let us remember that He has given us 
                            the sun and the moon and the stars, 
                            and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans - and 
                            all that lives and move upon them. 

                            He has given us all green things and 
                            everything that blossoms and bears fruit and 
                            all that we quarrel about and 
                            all that we have misused - and 
                            to save us from our foolishness, 
                            from all our sins, 
                            He came down to earth and gave us Himself.

                            ~ Sigrid Undset

First Coming

                                        He did not wait till the world was ready,

                                        till men and nations were at peace.

                                        He came when the Heavens were unsteady

                                        and prisoners cried out for release.

                                        He did not wait for the perfect time.

                                        He came when the need was deep and great.

                                        He dined with sinners in all their grime,

                                        turned water into wine. He did not wait

                                        till hearts were pure. In joy he came

                                        to a tarnished world of sin and doubt. 

                                        To a world like ours, of anguished shame

                                        he came, and his Light would not go out.

                                        He came to a world which did not mesh,

                                        to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.

                                        In the mystery of the Word made Flesh

                                        the Maker of the stars was born.

                                        We cannot wait till the world is sane

                                        to raise our songs with joyful voice,

                                        for to share our grief, to touch our pain,

                                        He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

              

                                        ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Mary's Song

                                      Blue home spun in the bend of my breast

                                      keep warm this small, hot, naked star 
                                      fallen into my arms. (Rest...

                                      you who have had so far to come.)

                                      Now nearness satisfies 

                                      the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
                                      whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
                                      whose eyelids have not closed before.

                                      His breath (so slight it seems 

                                      no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps

                                      to sprout a world. Charmed by doves' voices,

                                      the whisper of straw, he dreams,

                                      hearing no music from his other spheres.

                                      Breath, mouth, ears, eyes

                                      he is curtailed who overflowed all skies, 

                                      all years. Older than eternity, now he 

                                      is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed 

                                      to my poor planet, caught 

                                      that I might be free, blind in my womb 

                                      to know my darkness ended,

                                      brought to this birth for me to be new-born,

                                      and for him to see me mended 

                                      I must see him torn.

                                      ~ Luci Shaw