Indescribable Love

By Virginia Smith

From an aging photograph on the bedside table, a bride and groom smile at one another with eyes full of love. The woman in the nursing home bed bears no resemblance to the bride. Dull, sightless eyes stare toward the ceiling, and sagging skin clings to the bones of her face like winter leaves reluctant to loose their fragile grip on the tree that gave them life.

As I hand a damp cloth to the man seated beside her bed, I detect a similarity to the groom in his wrinkled face. He raises the cloth to her forehead, and from the tenderness in his eyes I know he does not see her as I do. He sees instead every smile she has ever given him, every tear she has shed, every night spent together. He sees her as he knows she has been, and as he hopes she will be again. He sees her with love.

I leave the room quietly, awed by the power of such an indescribable love. And then I remember. A love like that, one transcending earthly boundaries, is merely a shadow of God’s love. My Father looks at me like that, not seeing as others do, but seeing instead the person Christ died to save.

PRAYER: Father, thank You for Your love that sees me with divine eyes, and knows no earthly boundaries.

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Romans 8:38-39 KJV.

Today’s devotion is by Virginia Smith, the author of over a dozen novels including Stuck in the Middle, which was a finalist for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year award, and the upcoming Third Time’s a Charm. Learn more about Ginny and her books at www.VirginiaSmith.org.