EPILOGUE
Marriage does not consist of just one form of human love. It is not merely romantic passion or friendship, or acts of duty and service. It is all of these things and more. It is overwhelming. Where do we get the power to meet the seemingly impossible demands of marriage?
Seventeenth-century Christian poet George Herbert wrote three poems about love, but the most famous was the last, entitled, simply, “Love (III).”
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
Love welcomes him in, but because of the poet’s sense of guilt and sin, he “grows slack” and shrinks back just inside the doorway. Love notices everything, however. He sees the hesitation and approaches with sweet words, like an innkeeper of old asking, “What d’ye lack?” The guest answers that he does indeed lack something important—the very worthiness to be loved. His host replies, with realism but confidence, that he intends to bring that worthiness about. He doesn’t love the guest because he is lovely but to make him lovely.
Unconvinced, the guest answers back that he can’t even look upon Love.
The mysterious figure reveals then who he is. “I’m the One who made your eyes, you know, and I made them to look upon me.” The guest now knows who Love is, because he calls him Lord, but he is still without hope.
“Just let this wretch depart in shame.”
“But don’t you know, I bore your blame?”
For this, even the guest’s deepest fears and doubts have no answer. And so the Lord lovingly but firmly tells him to sit down. And now the Lord of the universe, who humbly washed his disciples’ feet, serves the loved, unworthy man at the table.
“You must taste my meat.”
“So I did sit—and eat.”1
French philosopher, writer, and activist Simone Weil was a Jewish agnostic. But one day in 1938, she was meditating on this poem of George Herbert, and, as she did so, she had an overwhelming, powerful experience of Christ’s love. “Christ came down,” she wrote about that moment, “and took possession of me.”2 From that time forward, she became a professing Christian. She had not been expecting or seeking such an experience. She had never read any books on mystical experience, and as a Jewish agnostic she certainly was not looking to Christ for anything like this. And yet, through this poem, Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross became a reality to her. “In this sudden possession of me by Christ . . . I felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read on the smile of a beloved face.”3
When we looked at the conversion of Louis Zamperini and saw how the flood of Christ’s love gave him the immediate ability to forgive people who had tortured him for years, we cautioned that spiritual growth doesn’t always work like that. We must say the same thing about Simone Weil’s experience. Herbert’s poem is a masterpiece of spiritual art. It will yield endless insights, and I have personally found that it has worked on my heart powerfully, but if you turn to it for a once-and-for-all spiritual encounter that removes all your doubts and fears, you will probably be disappointed.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Christ’s love is the great foundation for building a marriage that sings. Some who turn to Christ find that his love comes in like a wave that instantly floods the hard ground of their hearts. Others find that his love comes in gently and gradually, like soft rain or even a mist. But in any case, the heart becomes like ground watered by Christ’s love, which enables all the forms of human love to grow.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. . . . Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. . . . This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
(1 John 4:7,8,10–11)