Poetry

"...from a husband and wife came our redemption."

I HAVE WRITTEN OVER 120 romance novels and novellas and having spent so much time in the world of Christian romance, saw both the good and the bad of it. My romance writer friends are awesome. Though I am not currently writing anything new in the genre, what they taught me is invaluable to whom I have become. I am not embarrassed by my books. Nor is the Spirit of God. This statement may surprise you. But He is the one who “invented it,” as we might say. I do not say this as an excuse but have had occasion to examine my life thoroughly in the last few years. There is not a decision I have made that I did not hold before Him and offer my repentance. “If this is not you, then remove it. I don’t need it.” I was and am sincere in this. I look Him in the eye now and remind Him that I write romance.

But romance is not meant to be what the world has made of it. There is a wonderful beauty to it that the devil has destroyed. That has entered the church and made of it somewhat of a joke. We laugh because we are uncomfortable. The world laughs because we appear foolish. We should be neither. When God created man and woman it was so that in becoming individuals, they would become one again and from them would come future generations made from their love and desire for one another. There is no laughter in this. When man returns to woman and woman joins with man, there is poetry which only the Most High God can fashion.

From them comes laughter, and in the growth of it, wisdom and understanding. A child is treasured by them, and taught from them, and raised to be like them. That child, once old, pours out his memories of them. We are not just ourselves but all of those who created us. I am my parent’s love for one another, and their parents’ before them. I am my brother who I followed after as a young girl and a teen. I am my aunt who gives so generously of her grace.

From them, from a husband and wife, came our redemption. God planned it this way. He formed the body for this purpose, that a woman would bear the child, that the man would hold hands with her to create it. The entire human body was made to function as it does for childbearing, and for the joys of living. We eat because God desired it. We run and climb because He wished us to do so. He wished us to have relationships, businesses, prosperity from the work of our hands. We are meant to create, to paint and sing and dance with amazing fluidity.

The body at its core was made for us to keep living. In the pumping of blood, in the path of the heart with its veins and arteries would flow the blood of Jesus Christ. Yes, that is why we have a circulatory system. So that when He died, His blood would be shed for our sins. And Jesus, after His Resurrection was remade and given a “glorious body,” one not like ours on earth (Php 3:21). His blood was placed on the altar of heaven and is no longer within Him. He cannot die any longer but lives forever. This was God’s plan from the beginning. God knew that in His Son would come our salvation. He knew what man would do to the Son of Man and what obedience it would require.

He made Him, the Lamb of God, as the bridegroom awaiting His glorious bride, the church, and a wedding banquet prepared for them of magnificent scale. In this, there is great romance. That a Man gave His life for the one He loved and treasured is more than a mental image. We’ve treated it like this, giving romance to the devil for the benefit of those outside of the church, and the devil has done with it what he does with everything, stolen it and destroyed it. The romance of the world is not romance at all, but something far inferior smeared and smudged as lipstick on a pig’s behind.

I am not here trying to convince you to read romance novels, but to convince you to reread the Scriptures and see in them the love of God on a far grander, wider, more beautiful scale than we have done in the past. I am not trying to convince you to read Song of Solomon, though you should read it because it is in the Word of God for a purpose. What I want you to gain through this is an appreciation for the human body and for the mind which adorns it, for the emotions which God formed within it.

God loves and laughs and hungers and desires, and we are made like Him. God’s Son, our Savior, lived and loved and walked and talked and made friendships as a man. He treasures those who gave their earthly lives to follow Him. He feels for them as a man would feel for those He loves. And God the Spirit who breathed life into adam and made of him a living soul, took the rib of adam and fashioned from it a woman, made from the breath, to live and love and breathe and eat with him as one flesh. This is the image we are given, which we must hold onto, and our words, spoken from husband to wife, those which men see and those which they don’t, are the beauty of God’s forgiveness. That He would send of Himself to be fashioned in the womb of Mary and grow up as the son of Joseph to die, age 33, and rise again, triumphant, for His bride.

God heals marriages. He heals people. He heals personal intimacy We, the church, must acknowledge this and take it seriously, not with laughter, but with an image formed in us of a beauty made by God which so many cannot see. There are those whose love life is in shambles, who have been stripped of dignity and abused. We must paint for them, in our lives, the love that God intended and become on His behalf, romance.

PSALM 45:1-3, VOICE
“My heart is bursting with a new song;
lyrics to my king erupt like a spring
for my king, to my king;
my tongue is the pen of a poet, ready and willing.
Better by far are you than all others, my king;
gracious words flow from your lips;
indeed, God has blessed you forever.
With your sword at your side,
you are glorious, majestic,
a mighty warrior.”

Image by GrumpyBeere from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com