The cherished bride

How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!

Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Song of Solomon 4:1

 

Read Revelation 21:1—7

I know this all has to be pictured for me. If I try to explain it as though I could move behind the pictures and think I was closer to the real thing I would still be as far away. My language would sound more abstract, but it would still be an attempt to picture what I can’t see yet. It just wouldn’t be as real as this. So let me stay with the picture of the bride. If you put me among the faithful, we’ll be, together, the bride. Our heart beating as one. Hoping we’re pretty enough. Unable to credit it, really, that the husband should look on us with longing eyes. That we’re cherished. That we’re adorable to him. Christ has prepared us for himself and he finds us, in the outcome, ravishingly beautiful.

 

Dear Lord, it is past my believing that this whole human story should end in such beauty. Such celebration. That we, the rebel sinners, who have destroyed and spoiled your creation, should be redeemed and sanctified, beautified and glorified to the point that you cannot help yourself from loving us. Indeed, it is the same love with which you loved before we were born, before we became these accomplished sinners. Now I rejoice that in your Day I shall become what you have always utterly desired.