Valentine’s Day: Love Letters

Ever since Jacob fell in love with Rachel’s face and figure, the mere glimpse of one’s beloved has made men go weak in the knees and caused women’s hearts to flutter.

Our focus on women in Christian history reveals lots of arranged marriages in which women used their status to do good things, widows used their inheritance for charity, or other women denied marriage altogether to devote themselves fully to God’s work. But as history progresses, we begin to see something else—wives who become partners in ministry with their husbands.

This is lovely, but it’s Valentine’s Day! Where are the flowers, the kisses, the love letters, the sweet nothings whispered in the ear?

Thank God for John Newton. Here was a man of wild passions who sinned boldly and repented well. He fell hard for Polly when he visited her family as a teenager. (“When I first loved you,” he wrote later, “I dreamed of you night after night for near three months.”) Over the following years, as he tried to make a career as a sailor, a naval officer, and eventually the captain of a slave ship, he kept pining for sweet Polly. (In fact, more than once, his efforts to visit her sabotaged his career success.) When he finally popped the question, she said no. He tried again and again. When she finally accepted, “I sat stupid and speechless for some minutes. . . . My heart was so full . . . that I knew not how to get a word out.”

A month later they were married—and he kept writing to her. “I arose before the sun to pray and give thanks for you.” “I find some new cause of endearment in you, every day.”

John Newton is best known for writing the hymn “Amazing Grace,” coming from a deep sense of gratitude for God’s love. Yet he also left a legacy of love letters to his wife, deeply grateful for her love. “Perhaps we may not be rich—no matter. We are rich in love.”

Today, no matter what our circumstances, we can be grateful both for God’s amazing love and for the human love he has allowed us to enjoy.

You have captured my heart, my treasure, my bride. You hold it hostage with one glance of your eyes.

Song Of Songs 4:9