Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025. 5pm.
She walked slowly, solemnly, down the aisle. Her hair, snow white, looked like cotton.
With purpose, she pushed a wheelchair that was nearly twice her size. Her husband sat there, eyes unfocused, head lolling back.
The room glowed with a golden light so warm it seemed to have been wrapped in a divine blanket. There was a baseball game going on in a field next to the church, shaking the floor with a Taylor Swift song that was punctuated by proud parents cheering and shrieks of laughter from the bleachers. It was like hearing a movie playing in another room.
But in the sanctuary, there was no music. Just silence and the creaking of floorboards and gliding of wheels with each step.
She reached the front of the room, and it felt like I was witnessing a wedding. I thought about the vows she made: Till death do us part.
The pastor dipped his hands in the dark ashes and lightly drew a cross on her forehead.
Remember that you are dust,
He drew a cross on her husband’s forehead.
And to dust you will return.
I realized I was crying.
It was a moment of heavenly and earthly reality converging, the direct juxtaposition of brokenness and beauty. The love of a wife despite the helplessness of her husband. The unseen sacrifices of sleepless nights and tireless trials.
I find that my generation has largely lost access to reverence. It tends to be more of an abstract concept than a reality. But in that moment, I felt deep reverence. It dawned on me that this is what true love looks like. This was what John meant when he claimed that we “ought to lay down our lives” for each other (John 15:13).
In her 30 second walk up the aisle, I learned many things.
I saw Jesus’ love embodied: a love that is willing to lower yourself, a love that means dying to your own desire to be comfortable. A love that means voluntarily walking into the valley of the shadow of death with someone else, willingly becoming bruised and burned alongside them, just so they know they aren’t alone.
In that moment, it dawned on me that true Christianity is not denial in the face of suffering. Rather, true Christianity is staring the darkness straight in the face against all impulses to run, and faithfully walking into the pitch black knowing we’ve been given a light. Without the Holy Spirit, it makes sense to run. This world would be hard-pressed to tell you a reason why you should stay.
It’s often more comfortable to settle for a counterfeit version of love, because true love is costly.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.”
God loved, so he gave. And it wasn’t just anything that he gave. He gave the costliest thing he could, a part of himself: his son. Often, when I love, I look for what I can get. Or what I can give so that I can get something else in return.
If God is love, then any concept of love is unfathomable without him. Love is a uniquely active phenomenon. Study alone does no good to aid understanding. Mental assent and lived reality are worlds apart when it comes to love. We do not know love until we are loved.
A family friend told me that before he knew the love of Christ, he equated love with the hunger for acceptance and finding purpose in that acceptance. He later realized what he thought was love was merely the search for love. However, after he was saved, he found out that love isn’t just relating to another, or experiencing mutual pleasure, but that true love—the fruit of the spirit love—is only a gift you can receive after coming to Christ.
His wife added that to love anyone, one must be a free person. Only when one is filled by God and given the chance to reject sin—that clamoring selfishness that makes relationships all about you, the pride that insists you deserve more, the creeping envy that insists another’s experience of love is better than yours— is one free to love, because love is no longer just about you. In Christ, love functions as its own fulfillment. One does not expect anything in return, because one does not need anything in return.
The fruit of the spirit is a gift of the spirit for a reason. Without the Holy Spirit, loving is impossible, because true love requires a full heart change, not simply behavioral modification. In the military one can lay down their life for their friend, but that does not necessarily mean they love that person. One can be nice without being loving. As the Pharisees demonstrated, it is easy to do all the right things for the wrong reasons.
This is not to say that Christians can now love perfectly, but as we are sanctified we mature in love. We have the ability to love other humans because love has been given to us through the cost of death, and now we can receive it on a daily basis.
A couple weeks later, I saw the same woman faithfully pushing her husband up the aisle yet again, this time to receive communion.
The body of Christ, broken for you. His blood shed for you.
In moments such as these, love, as lofty and majestic as it is, is brought down to earth and embodied. A wife, sustained by the love of Christ, brings her husband to Christ’s table, by which they are both reminded of love’s true price. Only after they are sustained and nourished by his body are they sent back out into the world. Brothers and sisters, let us remember that our God of love has graced this earth, and he offers himself as the means by which we can love each other.
Header Photo Credit: Annie Spratt