Paved With Love
The midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem.
-Song of Solomon 3:10 (KJV)
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Now, beloved, indulge yourselves with a glance around you for a minute. Look back to old eternity; let your eye peer through the mists which hide that ancient age before the ages began! What see you there but love, ‘according to His eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus or ever the earth was?’ Look a little closer; see the garden of Eden and the fall - what strikes your eye there, but love? The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. Look to the cross, and at God incarnate here below; behold Jesus living in suffering, and dying in shame! Here love comes to her climax, and lays bare all her matchless charms.
Look to the time of your own life. Was not love present at your birth, perfuming your first breath? Were you not nursed in love, cradled in love, and swaddled in love? Have you not since then, even in your sinfulness, been loved with an exceeding great and wondrous love? Did not love turn your heart of stone into flesh? Has not love dwelt in you since then even to this day? Have not even your trials been sent in love? Blind unbelief called it severity; look now, as Jesus sits at your side, and say, was it not the wisest form of love that smote you, and made you cry out in bitterness? Oh, I do remember at this day nothing in the dealings of God to me but love.
I sat me down last night, as this text charmed my spirit, and tried to think over my whole life, if perhaps I might light upon some unkindness of God to me; but my solemn witness is that from the first day my life began to beat, from the first hour I knew anything of the Lord whatever, all His dealings have been love, love, love, love, love, love alone - nothing else but love. Of my life I can and must say, ‘the midst therof has been paved with love.’
- “Paved With Love” - The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Vol. 19 pg. 549 (C.H. Spurgeon)
O, beloved!
I know how, at times, you feel unloved.
I know your deep longing for intimacy, how you desire to be both entirely known and entirely accepted, just as you are, with your beautiful quirks and your sin-stained nature. I know that you want to be fully embraced, tenderly cared for, words of love and reassurance whispered huskily in your ear as you let down your every defense and truly rest, in peace.
I know it isn’t all just as you’d like it now, beloved. I know the battle. The immense patience that He requires.
But beloved? Do you see? Do you see what He has done? What He is doing still?
He loved you before the world even began, do you know? He loved you with a lavish love, a ravishing love, with the only kind of love that He knew would do, beloved! It’s woven into the Story, your story, from the very beginning.
Consider what He has done for you, beloved, please? How He has been so very tender and kind to you? He has drawn you to Himself from an early age, has led you through the wilderness of sin and given you the coolest drink of water to quench your parched lips. He has made every stone in your path to rise up and give you strength rather than to cause you to stumble. He found you, beloved, when you were lost. He has delighted to feed you upon His Word, to give you comfort when you have sought Him in fervent prayer. He has revealed His glory to you in the awe-inspiring intricacies of creation. He has given you hope, beloved, in the uncompromising truth that our King will come again and rescue us, and remake All Things! He has bestowed grace upon grace, out of the overflowing fountain that is His love, has He not?
He feeds us by His Word. He sustains us by His Spirit. He spurs us on by His Body. There is none like Him, beloved. No creature - not even the most lovely - can be for you what our Beloved Savior can be, what He is already.
He is already victorious! He is already reigning in love! Whyever would we fear, beloved? Whyever would we doubt? Whyever would we allow ourselves to be driven to despair? (gentle)
Can we not look back over all He has already done from the Garden until now, and see His most precious love for us? Can we not rest fully in our Christ who has carried us thus far and who promises He will never leave or forsake us?
He has paved our lives with love, beloved. What more could we possibly ask? (weeping happily)
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O Lord, You give us more than we could even think to ask or imagine, don’t You? You are the Giver of all good gifts. We promise to wait for You, to trust in You, to delight in the love which You have so generously given already, by Your grace.
Like obedient children, we will choose to submit to You, even when we don’t understand a lick of what’s going on. You are the Father; we are not. We are but dim-witted sheep which, admittedly, need much tending and minding, or we are liable to fall off a cliff or succumb to a stealthly wolf. We are so weak, but You are Strength itself. Thank you for being our Good Shepherd.
May we never forget Your love, Lord. May we see it in every tree and cloud; hear it in every hymn and bird song; smell it in every fire burning, every lilac blooming; taste it at Your table, in the broken bread and the poured out wine; feel it when our hands find one another and we hold on for dear life.
You have paved our lives in love, Christ. We bless You and praise Your name Together, forever!