This year I decided that I was tired of my longstanding boycott of acknowledging or attributing any significance to this day — how it's propagated to be about "love," but really is about clearing out all the red and pink articles of clothing in your wardrobe and dressing up, or giving your girlfriend a rose that is disguised as a tightly rolled-up piece of lingerie. This year, I'd like for Dad to redeem this day for me. I wanted for Him to reveal to me the hope of true romance. A friend of mine once said to me that she believed romance was originally meant and created for intimacy with God, but over time became tempered by man's means to a selfish end.
Over the past months I've begun to realize that my intimacy with God is greatly affected by my conception of past romantic relationships with men. However many times I hear that I am purified from my past, I believe it. . . up until I come upon the door marked "lust and adultery." Because Jesus was a man, and God was always a man-ish figure in my mind, to me, this seems to be the only sin uncovered by His forgiveness. Shame clothes me like grime and tar again and again, because I can't seem to scrub myself clean. The water is tainted again and again with the residue of my filth. I can't seem to forgive myself or surrender my everything to Him. There's a part of me that I don't want Him to see or find out about.
But I know that this condemnation is not from the Lord. . . that He desires freedom, healing, and purity for me. I still remember when I first heard His voice. It really felt like I was in love. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Him. All I wanted to do was serve Him. . . to give up whatever it was that I had, because nothing compared to being near to Him. I want to return to that place, today. Today, I want to be romanced by His love, and in turn, I want to dance, for He who was my first love.
(I didn't rehearse this.)
"One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with Him, so Jesus went to His home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard He was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind Him at His feet, weeping. Her tears fell on His feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing His feet and putting perfume on them. […]
A man loaned money to two people — 500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt. […]
I tell you, her sins — and they are many — have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.
Then Jesus said to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
