Covenantal Love
As Valentine’s Day comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on my own love story. It is wholly imperfect, yet sacred and covenantal at its core.
When Nathaniel asked me to marry him, we were young college students, ablaze with love for the Lord. Both of us came from broken homes. We had not seen covenant lived out before us, so we did not instinctively know how to enter into it ourselves. What we did know was that Scripture would have to be our teacher. So we searched the Word to understand God’s design for love.
On the night of our betrothal, Nathaniel cut his hair. Since returning from Israel the previous summer, he had grown it long and thick. It fell into his eyes and paired easily with the leather Jesus sandals he wore around campus. Yet he had noticed in Scripture that the cutting of hair often marked transition, consecration, a new season. He wanted an outward sign that he was stepping into manhood as a family leader and leaving boyhood behind.
He had also been studying the final supper of Jesus with His disciples. Nathaniel understood that when Jesus lifted the cup, He was offering covenantal love even unto death. Having studied the Jewish roots of our faith, he recognized the weight of that moment. The cup was not symbolic. It was devotion sealed in sacrifice.
So before he proposed, Nathaniel washed my feet and offered me a cup of wine he had first drunk from. I understood enough to feel the gravity of it. If I drank, I was binding myself to him in covenant for all our days. I drank deeply. Then, following Jewish custom, we shattered the glass and left only the stem intact. It was our safeguard, our reminder. What God was joining together was set apart. No one else could enter that covenant.
Today, the wine stem sits in a silver tray upon our dresser. A daily reminder of the covenant we keep.
As I look back now, what moves me most is not the romance of our engagement, but the hunger that shaped it. Two young people from fractured stories, reaching for something we had never quite seen but deeply desired.
I know not everyone shares our story, but I do believe many share our longing. The longing for a love that is steady. Faithful. Covenantal.
Ruth desired it, just as I did. Just as you do. That desire itself is evidence of the image of God within us, drawing us toward His kind of love.
Covenant is not sustained by feelings. It is sustained by faithfulness. It is a daily yes. A daily choosing. A daily returning to the promise we made before God.
In whatever season you find yourself, God is still inviting you to drink deeply of His covenant love.
And perhaps today, in your marriage, in your calling, in your walk with Him, you can whisper again:
I still choose You.
