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Psalm 89:1 NLT

'I will sing of the Lord’s unfailing love forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness.'

Love is a wonderful yet imprecise word. The dictionary can describe it as “intense feelings of deep affection” and “a formula for ending an affectionate letter”. If love were a formula, I guess we would all experience far more stable, long-term, intimate relationships than appears to be the case. Of course, we recognise that we each emerge into adulthood with wounds and scars from the experiences of love that we encounter. Home life and then early romances all impact each one of us far deeper than we realise. These experiences then influence our ability and disability within a ‘loving relationship’.

Here the psalmist begins a journey from a different perspective. He will not sing of his love for God. Rather he opens his mouth and sings of God’s love forever. In fact, he is little concerned with informing us what his experience of love might be. And love demands this of us, for we are not the centre of our loving relationship. The object of that love is the focus.

It is also likely that I may in fact take this imprecise term, love, and invest it with meaning of my own imagination. I want love, being interpreted as a desire for security, partnership, friendship, sexual gratification, a family. Here love is given a clear and unequivocal concrete meaning.

So following Jesus in the hope of eternal security, personal safety, prosperity and provision reveals little about the nature of love for God and everything about the substance of what I in fact love. Accompanying Katey through her journey with MS, where the sacred heart of marriage where two become one was quickly impossible, was I to sing of Katey’s love for me or complain about my unmet sexual needs? Well, the reality is that I loved Katey for who she was, not as a means of sexual fulfilment. To travel celibate was no hardship, albeit a learned habit, for I knew of Katey’s deep love for me. She never failed to tell me and convey it through her eyes alone, even as spasticity and memory loss ate at her physical being.

QUESTION: How has God shown his unfailing love to you?

PRAYER: Loving Lord, I am so thankful that your love came to me freely as a gift, I will sing of your love.