“Hang my locket around your neck, wear my ring on your finger.
Love is invincible facing danger and death.
Passion laughs at the terrors of hell.
The fire of love stops at nothing-- it sweeps everything before it.
Flood waters cannot drown love, torrents of rain
can’t put it out. Love can’t be bought, love can’t be sold--
it’s not to be found in the marketplace.”
Song of Solomon 8:6-8 The Message
I absolutely love the poignancy of these words. I had read them before, but not in this particular translation. That is, until the Lord began whispering these words to me Christmas Eve, just shy of two weeks after Chris’ death. These words began my ascent toward heaven, towards Christ. When someone so extremely close to you dies, there is so much loss of hope, pain, anger, a myriad of emotions, and you somehow have to figure out how to hold your head above water, so you don’t drown in the stormy waters that have overtaken you, and those waters that you can do absolutely nothing about. You need to rely on a force greater than yourself to show you the way. How to survive again, how to live again, sometimes how to simply face the day.
Words from heaven are an important part in this process...they are vital, life-giving, resuscitating, rescuing forces that bring you up out of your present misery. Those words are the very DNA of our existence, after all...we were created from the Living Word. Now, as He is, so are we. And we live not “by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from his mouth.” (Matt. 4:4) These words from the Song of all Songs filled me with hope and the realization that I am not facing anything that is too much for God, His life empowers me to face every challenge. “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” (Phil. 4:13)
I was thinking about this all again this morning, mostly about the simple phrase,
“Love is invincible.” In this process I have had my share of moments of intense grief (as you can imagine) the kind that you feel completely overshadowed by the pain that your life will never be the same, and what you held most dear was violently taken from you...
Yet, I press on. His grace, His love compels me forward. The knowledge that I am so extravagantly loved by a King who has already faced danger and death for me fills me with peace as I face the death of my precious husband. When you realize that your life died with Christ, you start to see very clearly that your life is not your own. It is beautifully, wonderfully His, it is worth surrender. It is worth the cost that He paid. You can count on a love that will never leave you no matter the sorrow that you face, the grief, the pain, the danger. He is closer than the air that we breathe.
Love truly is invincible.
