Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean

Taylor Swift’s song Lover is one of the most beautiful pop songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a picture of two people who know each other, dance the evenings away, sit quietly and share secret moments that only they understand. This bond, lived out in the pastel-coloured rooms of their house, are the images of love we know now. “This is our place, we make the rules. … Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years? … This is our place, we make the call. … I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ‘em all.” Love is now familiarly known as this bond. However it came about, whatever the two do together, and whatever one has done for the other, this bond—lifelong and rich—is love.

But as I waded through childhood, teenage life, and then bumbled into adulthood, I was disappointed again and again by this framing of love. I’d had my share of seeking that feeling at the end of a 90s rom-com. A bit more soberly, I'd had my share in high school of longing for someone who would understand me, think well of me and love me even with my flaws laid bare. But that feeling of love never came when I searched for it. At the same time, though, I had discovered a love that outshone what I’d had in mind the whole time: the love of God on the Cross. Here I found a love that was robust and that took all I thought about love and surpassed it. I discovered a story of love that set right everything else I longed for.    

As someone who—like all of humanity—had turned away from God, I'd been withering in the darkness, cut off from the source of light and life. And because God is a ruler who upholds justice, I was on the wrong side of God and deserved not only his forsaking but his real disapproval. There's no hope for any of us in such a state. After all, without God, we're just atoms bumping into each other, forsaken by the One who made us and the only One who could confer purpose on us. This really resonated with how I felt about the sad and strange state of humanity I saw around me and felt within me: keeping up appearances of being hopeful only because pointing out our hopelessness—while honest—is taboo. 

But in an act of boundless love, God decided not to leave it at that. He came close to us. By writing himself as a human being into the story of humanity, he reached out his hand to us in Jesus. There was an outstanding sentence of death against us because we’d turned away from God and chosen our own gardens to lie in without his rule. But because God wanted us to be alive with him forever, God took the blame and took the sentence of death on himself instead, by dying on the cross. Justice achieved, and mercy given. Why do you think it is so moving to watch films where a life is traded for another, especially where the one who lays down their life is a humble hero who’d done nothing wrong? It is why the story of the God in the Bible, who loves us, is the story of love that sets right everything else and puts to rest every human longing for love. God loves us fiercely, without condition and without reserve. 

Circling back to the Lover scenes: beautiful as its picture of love is, I think it falls far short of meeting our heart's deepest longings for love. 

Love in the Bible is not pastel-coloured. It is soaked with blood. It is the laceration of flesh against the splinters of a Roman Cross. It is the piercing of palms and ankles; the way Jesus had to heave his body upward in order to take one breath, the holes through his hands tearing larger each time. Gruesome as that is, it is the beautiful exchange of life for life: not human being for another, but of God for us, absolutely undeserved. And now, His dying breath has brought me life. When I watch videos like Lover, I can taste the impending disappointment spill down the pastel walls. However well a relationship goes, human beings are still volatile and we will still be left longing. More than that, human love isn't all we were made for. We were made first to know the love of God. Until we have that, we're still longing. 

There are some mornings, even while isolated in my college room with nothing to look forward to in the day, I wake up and am jolted by the thought that God loves me. And it's not like “I guess God loves me? In any case it’s helpful to think He does?” But rather, I remember: “He actually died to bring me close.” And that comes with torrents of gratitude and security in the arms of my God who loves me. This is fiery love, who goes all the way to have me even when it seems ridiculous and not worth it. This is quiet love, who walks to death without shouting and pomp. This is vast love, who makes this relationship with God available to every nation on earth. Here it is. It’s love. It’s the way that God loves us, and it is vast as the ocean. 

Blessed Good Friday, wherever you are.

The ocean at Bournemouth, taken last year

Here are the words of a beautiful song to end on:

Here is love vast as the ocean,

Loving-kindness as the flood,

When the Prince of Life, our ransom,

Shed for us His precious blood.

Who His love will not remember?

Who can cease to sing His praise?

He can never be forgotten

Throughout heav’n’s eternal days.

On the Mount of Crucifixion,

Fountains opened deep and wide;

Through the flood-gates of God’s mercy

Flowed a vast and gracious tide.

Grace and love like mighty rivers

Poured incessant from above;

Heaven’s peace and perfect justice

Kissed a guilty world in love.

Here is love that conquered evil:

Christ, the firstborn from the grave;

Death has failed to be found equal

To the life of Him Who saves.

In the valley of our darkness

Dawned His everlasting light;

Perfect love in glorious radiance

Has repelled death’s hellish night.

That same love beyond all measure,

Mocked and slain by hateful men,

Lives and reigns in resurrection

And can never die again.

Here is love for all the ages,

Radiant Sun of Heav’n He stands,

Calling home His Father’s children,

Holding forth His wounded hands.

Here is love, vast as the heavens;

Countless as the stars above

Are the souls that He has ransomed,

Precious daughters, treasured sons.

We are called to feast forever on a love beyond our time;

Glorious Father, Son, and Spirit

Now with man are intertwined.