Making Love
I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;
I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done.
I will be filled with joy because of you.
I will sing praises to your name, O Most High.
Psalm 9:1-2
VIOLA
If I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense;
I would not understand it.
OLIVIA
Why, what would you?
VIOLA
Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!
OLIVIA
You might do much.
Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5
One sure test one’s love is to ask the lover to speak their love. Not just to say words, but to speak, to breathe that love into existence where it once did not exist in such incarnation, such incantation. To “make love,” in the old sense, means to create love from words spoken, to woo one with words as Cyrano does Roxanne from below her balcony– not the describing of one’s feelings, but the creation of that love in the space where it did not exist the very moment before.
Like Peter’s love on that beach with his beloved Lord, like the bride and groom speaking their vows into existence, there are things which do not exist until we speak them into existence. The Logos, the Word—everything was created through him, the universe, the “one word” was created through him– The Word.
I currently have the great privilege to co-lead an English/Bible study on Tuesday nights which serves up to two dozen university students and graduates from the Pusan National University area. It is one of the high points of my week, as I have the absolute delight of reading and speaking God’s Word with them.
I also have been writing a new study in my spare time on the mesage and implications of the Gospel. The bulk of responders to the invitation to this group have been young Korean Christians, so the need/desire seems clear. Many times after our current Bible study, students will share a genuine and deep passion for knowing God more which has been kindled by our study that night–May we have the opportunity to further serve these students and to share the reason for the great hope we have, and the great love.
