“Let us rejoice and be glad, and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”

 

Behold, He comes.

All across the land, the people lift their eyes toward the loud trumpet sound in the distance. The ground begins to shake as the heavy wheels of royal chariots approach, the rumbling rocks announcing His arrival and beckoning His welcome. His fame precedes Him, it is the Bridegroom King who returns to take His Bride.

 

As His chariot slows to a stop, there forms around Him a crowd buzzing with curiosity; a multitude hoping to be, or even just to see, the one He will choose. Without delay, a dazzling display of beauty parades before Him. With their heads dressed in lilies and roses, they beg for His delight, wooing and dancing, arrayed in their best efforts to capture His eye and win His affection. With countless desiring, and many prepared, who will He find ready?

 

As He looks upon the sea of lovely maidens, His eyes are focused, determined to find the one fashioned for him. His gaze moves quickly past the many adoring faces and then settles upon the distant the horizon, undistracted by the flamboyant show of pomp and glamor begging for His attention. Instead, He closes His eyes, listening through the noise of many calling out for Him, He searches not for what can be seen, but for what He has known.

 

His countenance lifts as His ear finds a faint, distant sound. Without hesitating, He sets off confidently toward it making a path through the lovely, the decorated, and the highly esteemed as they reluctantly make way for Him to pass them by. With focus unbroken, His steps hasten, compelled by a familiar tune, until finally, He stops beneath an old gnarled tree standing at the edge of a humble field. It is here where the song He now knows by heart can be heard loudly, having guided Him finally to its source. His gaze is set, focused on only one thing now.

Her.

 

He waits, still, listening to the song as it steadily rises from the very heartbeat of the one that has been here all along, waiting, always wanting Him; the one whose very breath has been the steady rhythm for the melody that carried Him through the night and beckoned Him into the dawning of a new day. The crowd strains in curiosity to see who He has found there waiting. Who is this one that has entranced His heart with a song?

 

"I will make Him a helper comparable to Him..."

​

With many Lovely behind, there stands now just one before Him; this one found Lowly. The crowd murmurs as they wait for His response, certain that he will be displeased with her simple appearance. She is not like the rest who are dressed in their own radiant self-protected dignity and decorated in costly articles of indulgence.

 

Instead, her strong body is draped in humble garments; the folds of her skirt stained with blood that spilled on her lap as she bound the wounds of the broken, and wrapped in an apron that is soaked with the tears she wiped from the hurting. Her frame is not poised and propped up by fragile glass slippers like the others, but instead they are fitted in sturdy, well-worn boots muddy from the field and the places she went that the others wouldn’t go.

 

The whispers hush when He begins to move toward her, coming in close, then closer; So close that she can feel the warmth of his breath. Away from the cloud of perfume that masks the stale smell of performance, He he finds on her the ruddy fragrance of the smoke from the fire that she kept burning, ready to warm Him whenever he should come; The fire she fed faithfully with the branches of precious rose bushes, an aroma that says “I love you more than the finest things I’ve found.”

 

He takes hold of her hand then places it tenderly in His own, studying carefully its condition. Unlike the others, dainty with the frailty of idleness, hers are strong from diligent labor and lifting the loads of others. His fingers brush over the worn skin on a hand that has not been hidden in the delicate silk gloves of self preservation, but instead they are sopped and swollen from washing the very feet that trampled her. He lifts her weathered hand gently to his lips, her gaze following until it is finally captured by His eyes.

 

His gaze is a waterfall pouring over her as he studies her eyes, like pools collecting its rush and reflecting back His own soul without words. His eyes are ablaze, intense with a heat that melts the confidence of all the others, turning away the shallow glaces of the ones that were at first flickering to charm him. But her gaze holds fast on Him with a steady confidence that says, “I knew you would come,” and tears that whisper “how I have longed for the day.”

 

The crowd waits, quietly subdued. The jealous glares now softened by the tender sincerity of Love that can be felt radiating from this one found Lowly as she looks upon the face of her long-awaited Bridegroom. Without a word, His certainty is known; she is the one He has come to find. The beauty perceived was not the beauty that He desired. The Bride He has chosen is less like they thought she would be, like they thought she should be and more like her King when He was being made ready; Beautiful in her willingness to be broken, radiant in her righteous woundedness. The one who, when the others heard beautiful, she heard Love.

 

"Greater Love has no man than this,

that he would lay his life down for his friends..."

 

It was this Lowly one who, while the others filled their days crafting their appearance and fashioning a display to impress Him, she spent herself in Love, tilling the humble field He left behind, the very place where he wrote her name like a vow on the tree that stood at the gate to welcome her in:

“Meet me Here, My Bride”

 

While the others put up fences to protect their fields of roses and lilies, sowing seeds to satisfy their own desires, she gave hers away so that she might devote more fully to tending His, daily entering in under that tree marked by Love into the place she would give her strength and all of her days, bending her back to see His dreams fulfilled, cultivating the seeds He left hidden in the soil; seeds that produced no immediate profit for her but instead would feed the hungry and all would come to be fed by its fruitful harvest. With every thorn of the earth that tore at her flesh, she held fast to the joy set before her;

Him.

.

... To Be Continued​