A love song
by Jan Merop
Cleveland, Tennessee
February is known for its emphasis on love. Not just Valentine’s Day…but embracing the goodness, kindness, and self-sacrifice that accompanies loving attitudes.
For me and my husband, Ken, it is also the month when we sealed our love through our marriage vows 41 years ago. So, February is special to us.
One of the blessings of our relationship has been the harmony of our voices. We both sang in choirs and did solos as well. But when we met and fell in love, our passion for Christian music produced harmony…an answer to a tender whispered prayer of mine.
I had been longing for a loving, God-honoring partner after having gone through a divorce and being a single Mom for seven years. So, when God brought Ken into my life and answered my prayer of “If only he could sing,” we embraced the Lord’s signature on our marriage.
Through the years, music and singing together have been an enormous blessing. But I also have learned that it is important to hear the music in another person’s soul.
That’s not always easy to discern even in close relationships. And that is where listening, quieting your own soul, and not looking only at your own interests come in.
A husband is to be a good student of his wife…studying her and knowing her so that he can help her to be all she can be. A wife is to respect her husband as they are “heirs together of the grace of life.” With that respectful demeanor, a wife also comes to know her husband more intimately.
Knowing takes on the idea of a deeper understanding of their soul’s song…that which makes them who they are.
1 Peter 3: 7 NKJV says, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”
I have heard on a couple of occasions that love is learning the song in someone’s heart and singing it for them when they need it most…or singing it back to that one when he or she has forgotten the words.
It can happen. Trauma in one’s life, the death of a child, illness, vocational losses, or any number of things. Suddenly, that song that makes you… ‘you’ …is buried in fogginess and not distinguishable.
That’s when love jumps in and sings it back to you, and you are revitalized and the harmony returns.
Therefore, love so that the music never ends. Selah
Blushing Promise
Like the bride who has saved her first kiss for her groom,
These petite, finely etched roses seem to be blushing with promise.
Each exquisite, perfectly painted flower
is a classic work of art whispering pledges of hope.
“Do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases.”
Song of Solomon 2: 7b
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After six years in the mountains of Avery County, Ken and Jan Merop are now living in the hilly Tennessee countryside of Cleveland, TN…just outside of Chattanooga. Ken’s photos can be seen at kenmeropphotography.com.
Read more Christian news from Ken and Jan HERE.
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