I love a good romantic novel. One that sweeps you away into a different world and makes your heart smile with content as the story closes with the perfect ending. I am a romantic. I love how I can get so caught up in someone else’s love story and find myself cheering them on until the final moments of the book.
In my life, I may not have a romantic love story just yet to share with everyone— such as the ones I read in books—but I will tell you this, the greatest love story I have is the one of my King and I.
The novella of love
For me when reading a romance novel, I always get really excited when my two favourite characters finally realise they both love each other. It is always exciting when what you have been hoping for the entire time, finally happens and changes the entire story from that moment on. When we realise just how much God loves us, it is beyond absolute compare to even the greatest and most heart warming of love stories.
This kind of realisation reminds me of the scene from Baz Luhrmann’s film ‘Romeo and Juliet’. There is a moment when Romeo and Juliet’s eyes meet staring from either side through an aquarium. These star-crossed lovers are like two lost kindred spirits who find each other in that moment.
This is a lot like the love between God and his children. We start out lost yet longing for something to fill this God shaped hole in our lives. The moment when our hearts meet is much like two star-crossed lovers or kindred spirits finally finding each other.
When you realise how much God loves us and see God’s love, you know there is no one else in the world for you but Him. No love exists in the world like God. When we meet Jesus, our life will never be the same, just like when my favourite characters fall in love or realise they love each other—their lives and the stories are changed.
The joy that rises up in your heart as you look at the world in a whole new light knowing that the one you love created everything you see. The immeasurable power of God’s love that surges through your veins and the power of the words “God loves us” resonates deep because of the realisation—it is true—he really does love us. Romans chapter 8, verse 39 says: ‘neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
Love that sweeps you away
The fairytale romances that we seek and love don’t just belong in books. Perhaps they are different in real life from what we read, but one love you can always rely on to give you a ‘happy-ever-after’ is God’s love.
If finding the love of God is a struggle, allow yourself to be swept away into a distant melody of his love knowing that, although we are all sinners, he still loves us. Romans chapter 5, verse 8 says “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
God is love. He has given us the gift of love, and what better way to use it than to love the one who bestowed the gift on us in the first place. Why would God create such a beautiful creation if he did not love us? 1 John chapter 4, verse 8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
When we are in love with Jesus, the love we have for Him shines out of us. This is how we lead others to God. “Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter Chapter 4, verse 8). Just like joy comes from the Lord, when we show love to someone else, they feel loved, and we have just shown them what perfect love from God looks like.
Undeserving love
We all crave an everlasting, unconditional love. If you feel like you do not deserve Gods love, rest on this: Jesus is love. Love died on the cross for us. We do not deserve his love, but he loves us anyway.
No matter the sins we have committed, the pain we have inflicted, the deceit, the guilt, all of it is in the wheelbarrow of our life weighing us down. All God wants you to do is to let go of the handles, give in to Him, and let yourself be wrapped in pure holy love. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” (Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 3)
For hundreds of years books have been a way to escape from the real world and enter into someone else’s. Romance novels have been twisted and turned according to the author and sometimes it is hard to find a perfect love story that you can feel connected to or look up to in the hope that one day it may happen to you too. But out of all the romance novels in the world, all the fairytale-like hopes and dreams for the perfect love, we will never find a perfect love such as the love God has for us. God is perfect and he is love.
We may feel like we are lost, that we do not deserve any kind of love we receive, or we may even feel like we will never get that perfect love we dream about.
But I encourage you to go, fall helplessly, and be completely in love with your God, because I can guarantee—it will be the greatest love story ever told.
“We love because he first loved us.” (1 John chapter 4, verse 19)
Cartia Moore is a connoisseur of fine chocolate and a sword fighter, trained and skilled in the art of fencing. She is currently studying a bachelor of arts majoring in drama. Her focus is film, television and swordfighting sequences. She hopes to graduate and form her own drama and acting school.
Cartia Moore's previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/cartia-moore.html