How does love speak?
In a thousand daily ways, through a sonnet, or in a crooning song?
Does it speak in a way I’m accustomed to hearing? Does it have a voice or does it have hands, and do they speak the same language? Can it speak a thousand ways over a single day, in life’s million moments being strung together?
Sometimes words aren’t spoken aloud, but the hands and eyes give the heart away. Yet if words don’t hold love, they’re holding something else.
Offer your words to the cupbearer before anyone else; does it pass? Would the King drink and be pleased with the cup?
Maybe love is spoken in roughened hands that plant seeds and in tattered hearts that write poetry or an older woman’s fragile hands baking a loaf of bread… all gifts of love to this aching world.
Maybe love is spoken through hearts poured out on scraped knees, the broken ones who cry out for mercy, fully aware for the need of grace.
Love is spoken a multitude of ways, from an earth full of wounded, seeking, beautiful people.
I love, because He first loved me. I can’t love you, or love you well, unless I know how much I am loved first.
He, YWYH, I Am… He started it, this love song, that all of creation is singing even under a curtain of curse.
Love is in the wind that whispers to me when I am outside, His voice is in the wind, and I see that His invisible hand moves tree branches up and down.
Love is in the wonder of a young mind over the world of an ant.
Love walks with me, holds my hand and heart during my walk through a day, and helps me navigate the rooms of fear, heartbreak, joy, and waiting.
Love speaks to me when I see myself sitting on the green vinyl stool in my house as child, years ago, eating almonds or some other snack from the pantry closet. Mom’s pantry closet is still, to this day, filled with glass jars of varying sizes, most of them recycled jam or peanut jars that have been washed and filled with treats, such as almonds, cashews, raisins, small candy bars, and pastel-colored sugar mints, the kind that that used to be served at weddings.
I taste it in the fresh apple juicemade from red–skinned slices pushed down an old juicer. I drink it in the sun-tea that brews on the wooden deck under a very hot sun. No one could believe that any harm could come from drinking a tall frosty glass of iced tea, the antidote of choice to combat the heat of a hot summery day.
I see love blooming in the cement planter full of pansies and the daffodils circling the sweetgum tree at my old home.
I see love blushing in the pale pink night sky when night undresses the day… another moment of God’s love and grace in this world, a day that has passed, a grace not to be forgotten.
And today, love is in my own hands that spread soothing calamine lotion on my children’s back as they suffer the chicken pox.
I see love, feel it, know it, taste it, because He first loved me and has been gently teaching me since I took my first breath.
What I remember… is how those things were really His touch, His grace. Even if the days weren’t– and aren’t– perfect, far from it, and we carry wounds from past days… for the moments that speak love, I gather them in like flowers and place them in a vase and admire them in my mind and pluck the petals of the many ways He loves me.
I may fail at love daily, and need God to teach me again, but He does so, patiently, in the way He loves me, through His grace, by not giving me what I rightly deserve, and offering me Himself. Once again I am able to stand and offer love… because He showed me how it’s done.
And all so I can finally say… I am in Love.
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How does love speak to you, His beloved one?
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Sharing with Emily at Imperfect Prose, and
Ann at Walk with Him Wednesdays:
I love because He loved me. This is the truth of all truths. Beautiful words telling a wonderful truth. 🙂
beautiful truth… and oh, how He loves in the details!
oh my goodness…this is lovely….Maybe love is spoken in roughened hands that plant seeds and in tattered hearts that write poetry or an older woman’s fragile hands baking a loaf of bread… all gifts of love to this aching world. Wow! well done.
I am reminded of a not so poetic love action, when my husband placed a piece of cardboard behind the venetian blind that was not keeping the sun out of my eyes as I sat at my computer. When he was finished, he asked me if I knew what that cardboard was. I said, “What?” and he replied, That is LOVE. Seeing what can be done to cause another to be happy, comfortable, pleased or blessed. God is Love,
Cardboard=Love! I love it! That is sweet. Thank you for sharing that!
So many beautiful images in this! The canning, the scents… it definitely gives a feeling of wholesome goodness
Oh this post leaves me breathless.
Such beauty!
A wise treatise.
Can it speak a thousand ways over a single day, in life’s million moments being strung together?
friend…. this is extraordinary writing. extraordinary.
wow, that means a lot, I highly value your opinion! Thank you!
This piece is so devotional…ministering into deep places of heart and soul…each phrase so beautifully woven together!
Blessings!
(coming in from Emily at Imperfect Prose)
Marvelous writing!
Gorgeous, love the LOVE. He spoke love to me this morning as I drove slow down my gravel road and was greeted by a herd of deer who paused for the longest moment to look me straight in the face. A wonderful Birthday Greeting for my birthday morning!
Happy Birthday to you!! I wrote a longer message on your blog :).
Thank you for sharing this gift– I could see the deer in my mind. What a gentle, beautiful sighting!
I hope your little ones are recovering peacefully, non-itchingly from the chicken pox! Last night, my teen had a migraine and at 2 a.m., I loved him with warm, damp wash clothes for his head, with hands that ferretted out the cool-mist humidifer (we had just moved) to moisten the air he breathed, and my hands that rested on the heating pad wrapped around his head prayed for healing. My 10 year old woke up and prayed with me.
Your post so gracefully reminds me to live love holisticly – and, in non-obvious ways:) Simply Up-Lifting!
bluecotttonmemory… what love at 2 am… the wash cloths, finding the humidifier, and the prayer… beautiful, friend! What mamas do… sometimes no one knows but the Father. Your words speak to me! Thank you.