“Love you!”

When did “Love you!” at the end of a phone call become a thing? I remember a time when you didn’t end each conversation that way. Of course, I also remember rotary phones. Now it is such a standard signing-off phrase, we say it without thinking…like my friend did recently as she was getting off a call with her dentist’s office. Boy, was that receptionist surprised! So let’s talk about the simple act of saying, “Love you.”

We’ll start with a little romance from the most romantic book in the Old Testament.

The Song of Solomon is a set of lyrical poems that describes the feelings between a young maiden and her beloved. The beauty of the language alone is worth the read, and you occasionally hear a selection from Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs) in a wedding ceremony. The intensity of the maiden’s feelings for her partner are clear and tangible.

I think that weddings should include the level of passion for two becoming one that is reflected in these poems. At every wedding I conduct, I pray that the newlyweds maintain the same strength of feeling they have on their wedding day for the entirety of their marriage. Of course the reality is that life gets in the way, and courtship eventually turns into dishwasher and laundry duty.

But how lovely it is to remember those first intense feelings of any love relationship:

Song of Solomon 2 (New Revised Standard Version)

The voice of my beloved!
    Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
    bounding over the hills.
⁹ My beloved is like a gazelle
    or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
    behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
    looking through the lattice.

The game is afoot. He approaches her gently, and looks are exchanged. Can you believe this stuff is in the scriptures? It reads like a saucy beach novel!

¹⁰ My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away;
¹¹ for now the winter is past,
    the rain is over and gone.
¹² The flowers appear on the earth;
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.
¹³ The fig tree puts forth its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.

You know what this tells us? That God loves love. That God blesses love when it is mutual and shared. Spouse to spouse, parent to child, sibling to sibling, neighbor to neighbor, and friend to friend, love is a fragrant offering that connects us to each other and to God’s creation. As winter turns to spring, the call to love one another is always in season.

Where is God calling you to show love to someone today? Where can you be the voice of hope to someone who needs to hear that they are loved? Chances are, someone you know feels wholly unloved right now. You can change that.

Remember that love has the power to take us away to a better place. It invites us to leave the ordinary and come away to something extraordinary.

Arise, my love, my fair one,
    and come away.

Love never fails. Faith, hope and love, these three: but the greatest of these is love.

Love you!