I was thinking about love languages and, well, showing love to people in general. I think at least in part love languages probably fall in with our overeager tendency to dissect and label every aspect of the human being, but this is a little different from previous posts.

The problem is, showing love is often packaged as a luxury. “This person likes gifts, so I will give him a card.” “This person likes quality time, so I will take her on a date.” They all end up being somewhat based on an event, a single crescendo of affection. These things are not trivial, but crescendos are nothing without the context of rhythm in an ongoing melody.
What is quality time without quantity time? What are cards and gifts without provision for needs? What are words of affirmation without words? What is physical affection without physical presence? What are acts of service without long term commitment?
Essentially, showing love is usually marketed like interior decorating rather than building. Curtains are not without their purpose and significance, but they’re nothing without a foundation to your house. I think this is mainly because love is treated as synonymous with gratification and romance. If loving someone means gratifying them, it will always be optional: a luxury investment in the emotional economy, so to speak. Love is not the act of gratification. Hopefully it does tug out at least a few smiles, but love is meeting needs.

Love is patient – This is not a gift that can be given in a brief moment. This is a commitment to the whole of situation, perhaps decades.
Love is kind – And not randomly. This takes active training.
Does not envy – You aren’t weighing whether you are gratified against someone else’s life, and you aren’t charging it to your loved ones’ accounts.
Is not boastful – Throw away bragging rights at love’s door. There will be no room for the poison of self-glorification here.
Does not behave unseemly – No qualifiers here. There are some actions, words, and facial expressions that must simply be swallowed and eliminated from our hearts.
Seeks not her own – This doesn’t sound like a single “event” does it? There is never a “one time I was selfless.” Love is also not about what we get out of it.
Thinks no evil – Seriously swallow those thoughts. Take every thought captive, put to death every thought that is a traitor (yes, death is one of the biggest love words).
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth – Yes, meeting needs means being the bad guy if evil is seeking to be gratified. If love were gratification, you would be a cheerleader for every pet sin that grieves the heart of God. This could well become the death of the one you love.
Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things – Who ever heard of endurance as a love language? “All things” is based on needs, struggles, challenges, pains, deaths, betrayal, not only on compliments or occasionally taking out the trash.
Love never fails. – Gratification always will. Don’t found your love on wallpaper and a nice pair of drapes. Build your house on the corner stone, walk in step with the Spirit, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow daily.
Love never fails.

Ah, thrift stores: the haphazard museums of the recent past. As a girl with old-fashioned tastes, I’m sure to part with at least a few dollars to gain a favorite skirt, the most comfortable chairs, or some treasured books or music. I’ve met many close friends in thrift stores. Twila Paris, Point of Grace, Andrew Murray, and now Elisabeth Elliot, while hard to find in modern music aisles and bookstores, are familiar faces in the secondhand realms.
So it is that I find a copy of Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ’s Control. What a sweet little book. Having received numerous letters and questions about romance and relationships, Elisabeth Elliot writes of her desire to keep the Lord as her first love, her courtship with Jim, and wisdom on the subject of relationships that she has gained over the years.

This is a short recommendation for the book, as I believe it could be a benefit to any woman. I was eager to read it as soon as I bought it, not because I as a single woman am eager to seek out the prospect of marriage. I used to be an avid story writer, and, being analytical, sometimes took tales of romance further and into more detail than is godly. The imagination wasn’t something Elisabeth Elliot directly addressed in these terms, but reading her gentle call to dedicate virginity to the Lord gave me a clearer opportunity to dialogue with the Lord about some of my thoughts, fears, and struggles in the area of romance.

Midway through the book, Elisabeth Elliot talks about some of the struggles women have with their interactions with men. I can identify in general with wanting to be controlling of my circumstances, even when that includes other people. While convicting, this was also very encouraging. I’ve never been much into hair or make-up or talking about boys, so in reading Passion and Purity, I got a chance to understand more fully who I am as a woman, though I be a rough and tumble one.

Perhaps the most significant way this book has impacted me is in fleshing out what it means to wait, and the value and beauty that comes from such an unexpected place. Again, I am coming to this book from a point in my life where I single, and willing to stay so. What I came to understand more personally in reading Jim’s letters and Elisabeth’s reflections is that the Lord has called me to wait on Him. Waiting is a struggle. Jim and Elisabeth were in love for five years before the Lord gave them permission to marry, and they thought often of each other in that time. In the same way, there is the wedding supper of the Lamb. I’m not there yet, but I long to be. Sometimes I feel that more should be happening in my life as I seek to follow the Lord, and wonder if I am doing something wrong that so little is happening around me. Perhaps He feels further from stirring my emotions than I would like. My life as a missionary has not “taken off” yet in the way I hope it will, and that can be hard to accept. What I appreciate is that this book is from the perspective of missionaries. So many biographies gloss over five or ten years in the second or third chapter, and dive right into the meat of the action. Of course books have to do that, but if you’re still living in chapter two, it can be easy to feel as though the calling has passed you by. Passion and Purity is a book about waiting. Those five years are given one hundred and eighty-eight pages of attention: a comforting reminder that the Lord has not forgotten a little heart that beats for Him, and that there is greater joy in the fulfillment for having waited.

I’ve written more of what I personally gained from reading this book, though there is certainly much more. The majority of what I gleaned was related to my relationship with the Lord. It is, of course, a book about a very human romance, so there will certainly be much to gain in that avenue, but all such relationships best begin with the Lord. For that reason, I believe this book would be a help and encouragement to all women, particularly those that seek after the Lord.

If you have read Passion and Purity, or have more questions about it, please feel free to comment. I would to hear from you and discuss it.

The Lord be near, my sisters.

The bride reaches out a delicately laced arm.  Her hand extends just beyond the corner of the brick wall.  Her heart cannot help but leap as she feels her husband’s hand close around her own.
No, not her husband.
Not yet…


It has been a tradition that the bride and groom are not to see each other on their wedding day until the guests rise and the bride walks down the aisle. From it has sprung a rather sweet tradition of the couple meeting up on opposite sides of a wall, blindfolded, or around a corner, so eager to spend time together, but knowing they must wait.


The image came to my mind this evening as I was listening to a sermon on our marriage to Christ. I have heard many a woman planning a wedding wish she could just elope and be married without all of the fuss and hassle of waiting through the work of it all to be close to the one whom her soul loves. I have to admit that I often feel the same way about Jesus. I can reach out beyond a wall, and I feel His strong hand grasping mind. My heart sings for joy even as it breaks and aches to be with Him face to face.


Why must I wait? Why can I not come home now?

We ought not allow ourselves to thrive on the intensity of that emotion, but there is still such significance to those moments. What makes wedding photos such a prized possession is how much they remind us of that sweetness of young love. An engagement seems so short after twenty-five or fifty years of marriage, and the wedding was only a day. I do not think our marriage to the Lord will be so very different.

When we, His bride, are consummated to eternity with Him, we will surely say, “Ah, at last!” Every tear is wiped away, all enemies subdued, and no night, for we will be in the light of His presence forevermore. Even so, we must still love to remember His faithfulness through this seemingly endless betrothal. We will look back so lovingly at how He led us like a bride through the wilderness of this broken world.

Though this world still hurts me so keenly, I don’t want to be so overwhelmed with the circumstances that I forget to turn to the One whom my soul loves. How many memories will we have, recorded for us in His heart, to peruse for all eternity? Oh, to hold on to His enduring faithfulness in this life through life everlasting! Like our sister before us, I want to treasure all of these things in my heart, and think on them when the bridegroom comes.

In the meantime, I squeeze His hand to say, “I love you.” And I feel His hand press mine in return.

Not yet…
Soon, my love.

Soon…