Poison and Wine and Passionate Love

“Your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine
You think your dreams are the same as mine...
Your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don’t have a choice, but I still choose you.


I don’t love you, but I always will.”


When we allow our hearts to long for what they were intended to long for, we would say that we long to be loved passionately and permanently.  We long for our spouse to speak words that both soothe and inflame our hearts.  We long for such oneness that our very dreams are shared by the other.  We hope that the ones we love would be a source of healing to us, and never waver in their whole-hearted commitment to us.  But living in a broken world with broken hearts, we do not experience the love we were made for.


Pain and anger build, and in the moment that we could speak peace, we spew venom.  When the opportunity comes to chase the dream we have held onto from younger days, we forsake our spouse to move headlong into it.  In the moments we long for tenderness and gentleness from our spouse, we are treated roughly.  And instead of wholehearted love, we secretly keep our options open.  We do not love the way we were intended to love.


But, while this song on the face may seem to speak about broken love, I think it also speaks of a deep and passionate love.  It is a love that is passionate not only for the other as he or she is, but a love that is passionate for our spouse as they were created to be.  Because we are sinners, we need another to speak words that reveal not only our belovedness, but our brokenness.  And while these words may feel like poison, they carry the potential to heal.  Because we are self-centered lovers, we need our spouse to remind us that the dreams we have for our lives may not be what God has called our partner to.  And while we may long to be constantly embraced by our spouse, there are moments when what we desperately need are the faithful wounds of a friend to bring us to repentance.


And this is the very love that Christ shows to the Church as His bride.  The more I listened to this song, the more I could imagine Jesus singing these words to his Church, as a passionately loving God and Groom.  God’s love is not dispassionate toward us, unmoved by our sin or glory, but is deeply affected by our movements toward Him and away from Him.   His words to us are not always intended to soothe, but to disrupt and lead us to seek healing.  His dreams for our lives are often drastically different than our own selfish and self-protective plans.  And while he does move towards us with gentleness, he can also come at us as an invader, an aggressor, to call us to contend with him and contend with our sin. 


So, if we were created to love and be loved passionately and permanently, why do we experience it so infrequently?  What is it that keeps a person from loving another in this way?  And how does a heart become so broken that it cannot accept or feel this kind of love from a spouse, or from God?  After living so long without it, one begins to wonder "is this kind of love even really possible?"  This song reminds me that such a love is possible.  By the grace and strength of God, it is possible for a wife to love a husband at his most sinful, most broken, moments.  It is possible for a husband to draw strength to hold to the vow he made to her to love her in sickness and health, for better or worse, until death parts them.  And it is possible for God to continually choose to draw near to his people even in the moments of their greatest betrayal.