We hear a lot about love in the springtime and yet, most people cannot define it. Contemporary culture issues proclamations such as  “Love is Love”, which is unhelpful and places the concept at the mercy of limitless subjective interpretations. How can we recapture the meaning of the word?

Thankfully, God gives us a thorough description of what love is and provides solid ground upon which we can build our understanding:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (I Cor. 13:4-7)

Few would object to the above description, until they reach the phrase “rejoices in the truth”. Like the word “love”, the meaning of the word “truth” is difficult to come by these days and causes confusion. You may recall that the 2016 Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was “post-truth”, suggesting the term itself was outdated. Again, God is able to restore the solid footing we need in order to make sense of neglected words. The Bible teaches us Jesus Christ is the truth. It also tells us that God’s word is truth.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17)

With a biblical foundation, we can say that truth is inseparable from the words of the Bible and from the words of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, if the Bible tells us love “rejoices in the truth” then any faithful definition of love must align with the Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus. Logically, true love cannot exist in a post-truth framework, since there would be no truth to rejoice in.

For those who reject the God of the Bible and its teachings, please recall that atheism is unable to define love coherently. If humanity is merely the end result of millions of years of mindless, guideless, chemical processes, then love is not a real thing that we feel or receive, but merely chemical reactions working on the brain. Without God, love is reduced to a brain state, and unlike the biblical concept of love, chemical reactions are not unique or personal. On atheism, parental love for a child is only an evolved behavior stemming from animal instincts toward species preservation. Any attempt by atheists to make love meaningful comes by robbery of biblical concepts God has provided. The atheist worldview reduces love down to cold, impersonal processes, but they seldom talk about it that way or behave as if that were the case.

While thinking about love, I took some creative license with Genesis 2 and imagined a scene in the Garden of Eden where Adam carved his name, and the name of his lovely new wife Eve, into the trunk of a tree. It’s not difficult to imagine Adam performing such a sweet act of devotion. When he saw his beautiful new bride for the first time, he exclaimed:

This at last is bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
    because she was taken out of Man.

(Genesis 2:24)

***

I first sketched out a design on a postcard to make sure the composition worked. Through we don’t know if Adam and Eve were created with the ability to speak Hebrew, I decided to spell out their names in Hebrew on the final card instead of using initials.

Next, I sketched the final design onto a Strathmore watercolor card.

Using the Prima Art confections watercolor set called “Terrain”, I painted the card using water pens.

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed springtime!   ~Scarlett