an unlikely love story

I find myself caught up in an unlikely love story.

It’s captivating.

It’s wonderful.

And it’s true.
It’s about Love proceeding and love responding. The First, because of desire. The second, because it cannot escape it. The object of the Love sees little of it’s own vices, and love’s little as it ought to love. The giver, the Original, sees all of His loved one’s vices. And He loves completely.
The one who is loved is of lowly origin: she is a peasant, penniless, without any beauty that recommends her.  She would not know any estate save that  of a queen, however, and she has sold herself, by birth and by choice, to a rebel army, that retains complete mastery over her, and she does their bidding.  Her vices I cannot number, for they are unmeasured. She has been shown standards of beauty, and purity, and morality, but rather than change her, the giving of these has worsened her, as she saw in them an occasion for greater offence, and went deliberately against these things. She deliberately lavishes her affection on the most perverse subjects, hoping to offend any who would dare think that she must raise her proud eyes in helplessness to gain true satisfaction. She is beaten, taunted, mocked, laughed at by the cruel masters over her, when they see her foolish willingness to do their bidding, but she have none attempt to help her: for she wills none having Lordship over her, and hopes to escape her captors by her own devices. She employs even those high standards which I have mentioned, but they are twisted to her liking, so that she may not be following the bidding of another: and she hopes by these to liberate herself, though the captors laugh, and the compassionate warn that she will nor prevail. Her hopes of dominance ever bid her one way and another, for at one time she strives by her willful arrogance to better her reputation, an at other times she flings away these things, and hopes to assail the King by her heinous rebellion against what He has called good.

The One who loves her is one who, even as her heinousness lacks adequate description, so exceedingly His virtue, His compassion, His power to crush His every enemy, and His complete attraction, is beyond words. He saw her, crying out against Him, and He saw nothing good in this one that He set His love on. He sought not to subject her to Himself, as a defeated and dejected creature, and display her as one who has tamed a wild beast: no, He sought to win her by love; He looked upon her, as she recoiled in her pride and rebellion, and said, “You will be mine forever. Your character is black, but I will give you My whiteness; I will take you, and fill you with My love, adorn you with My virtue, and you attractive to all with My beauty. I will take, not in part, not gradually, but completely away from your captors, and give you all these things, and all will praise your beauty because you look like Me.”

Her captors screamed with rage, demanding that she be punished for her evils, the magnitude of which only this lover knew, for they were against Him. But He would not lose any of His bride; all that was given Him, He would lose none. He was willing to accept the just punishment for her, for she could not possibly have borne it.

And now, He takes her into His victory. She knows she must love Him and glorify Him alone, but she knows not how. He will patiently teach.  She finds her old habits too frequently run back to, but He reassures her that she will never be under the old master. She doesn’t respond perfectly, but He has taught her to long to do so. And He loves her more than she can ever know, though He tells her every day unto everlasting.

And somehow, reading back over this, I don’t think I’ve done anything as I ought to have done. The details make the great overarching plot all the more beautiful, but I do so poorly in expressing these things.

How deep the Father’s love for us,

How vast beyond all measure,

That He should give His only Son,

To make a wretch His treasure.

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