Captured By Love

Let me tell you my love story. 

The story starts in the early 1960’s when a young preacher boy at Mercer University catches the eye of a beautiful secretary and fellow student.   When they marry, the preacher and the teacher dream of a family together.    

The couple spends their newlywed years pastoring a country church.  They learn how to love and be loved among these farmers, doctors and house wives.  These lessons shape their lives. 

In those days, preachers worth their salt attended seminary.  Soon, the honeymoon is over and the bride teaches in a big city school and the groom attempts to master Greek and Hebrew.  Life fills with school and friends and eventually another country church on the weekend.  As the years pass, they watch friends welcome little ones into the world … and they keep teaching, studying and preaching. 

Tests and doctors, questions and fears follow.  Years rolled on.  The world keeps moving.  Soon, something shifts.  Questionnaires and case workers, hopes and dreams develop.  Weeks and months roll together.  The world keeps moving with a skip in its step. 

On Monday, February 10^th, 1969 a baby boy bounces into the world loved more deeply than anyone will ever know.  On this day, a young, unnamed, single college student gives the world a lesson in love.  She loves that boy enough to place him in the hands of a nurse and drive away. 

On Wednesday, February 12, the young couple sits down for a birthday meal.  It is their 7^th celebration together and still the chairs around the table sit empty.  The phone rings.  A yell ensues.  A baby boy waits for their love.  The bride exclaims with tears in her eyes, “It’s my best birthday gift ever!”

On Friday, February 14, the couple receives a true Valentine’s Day miracle … a deep, intense love moves into their lives with the arrival of a gurgling, smelly, baby boy.  Love invested becomes love received. 

As the adopted son, I have been captured by love in so many ways:  by the sacrificial love of my birth mother, by the invested love of my parents, and by the never doubted knowledge that I am loved. 

Jesus describes God with similar language.  “God loved the world so much, God gave God’s one and only son, so that whoever believes in him, will not perish, but shall receive eternal life.” I grasp this love because it captured me the moment I arrived in the world.  Thanks be to God.  Amen