In This is Love

 

How Do I Love Thee?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

 

 When I was a schoolgirl, this was the picture of love for me. Then again, I was also enamored with Anne of Green Gables who is probably the world’s purest romantic. Here Elizabeth breaks out the ways her love is felt and expressed. It knows no bounds. It is felt in the immense and insignificant. This love is pure, free and filled with passion. Every feeling, emotion, experience in her life from breath to smiles to tears is permeated with this love and she prays that God would make it even purer after death. It’s an amazing word picture that has been passed down through the years because we can feel with the author. But there is a deeper, more ancient love that is also simpler.

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  1 John 4:10

Here’s the Thing: God loved us first. God loved us best. We cannot compete, but we can join in His love with a thankful heart!

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