Day Sixteen: LOVE’S PERFECT SAFETY


Your beauty, within and without, is absolute, dear lover, close companion.
—SONG OF SOLOMON 7:6 MSG

Have you ever been deeply, unconditionally loved? Did you feel beautiful and secure? When we don’t feel loved, we’re insecure about our beauty. We’re insecure about our place in the world.

The question, “do you think I’m beautiful?” is ultimately a question of “do you love me?” We cannot make peace with our appearance if we feel unloved. Without love, our eyes are clouded and what we see when we look in the mirror is not an adequate reflection of who we are, or even how we truly appear to others.

But we cannot depend on love, at least not the love most girls are encouraged to believe in—the romantic, never-failing passion of a knight and princess. In this world, knights fall off their horses quite regularly, and princesses are too busy doing their taxes to hang around windows and let down their hair. In the real world, husbands sometimes find new wives. Disease and disaster end the story too soon. Even the best earthly love is not a lifetime guarantee.

But God’s love doesn’t change. He loves us with a strength we cannot fathom, and one I cannot describe. His love covers the gaps. His heavenly love makes it possible to love on earth. In God, we are loved. We are beautiful.When we age and our bodies fill out even as our faces grow taut, He still sees the beauty in us. Where there are gaps in our love, He closes them. Where we lack or tremble, He fills and steadies.

Ask: Help me to believe I am Your beloved, safe with You for all of eternity.

Believe: I am safe and loved. This relationship with God will never end.

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