The Fruit of the Spirit is Love

The Fruit of the Spirit is Love
Jeff Lampl

“The fruit of the spirit is love”   Galatians 5:22

The White House has seen marital . . . .  .

love at its worst and also at its best.  Ron Reagan, son of Nancy and President Reagan said,

“Once they had bonded together, they really were inseparable.   I mean it sounds cliché, but I don’t’ think that they ever spent a day apart where they didn’t call or speak on the phone.  He wrote her letters all his life.  They were in love.  And they stayed in love for 52 years”

Marriage is the best picture of God’s love for us when we return it to Him.   It’s permanent and solid.   Marriage is not the endgame for us.  If we see the thing we seek in it, we will be glad, but we will also have missed its essence.   As the highest of human loves (done right) marriage gives joy, peace, pleasure, meaning, purpose and fullness to life for both spouses, but in its highest form marriage is still not the thing (we are seeking) itself, rather it is the conduit, the medium for the thing we are seeking.

When we hear music that is beautiful, we are tempted to believe that the beauty is in the music.  We are wrong, points out CS Lewis.  The beauty was not in the music, rather it came through the music.  Marriage is like that. 

Craig Shirley writes about the Reagans,

“When he (Pres Reagan) was away, he wrote to her daily, letters that were tender, funny and touching. He’d depict himself in drawings crying over being away from her. When Reagan was running for president, he wrote her that “maybe being in the White House wouldn’t be so bad — you’d be right upstairs.”

“Nancy Reagan remembered everything about her husband and he remembered everything about her. They often dined together in the restaurant both where she had said “yes” to his proposal of marriage."

“They were really best friends who slept in the same room and same bed for their entire marriage. They laughed together, celebrated together, cried together and when he died, a part of her died”

“In his later years, she gave part of herself to him, like an O. Henry story. She ate less, slept less, worried more, cried more and, when he died, she mourned him greatly. She never stopped loving Ronald Reagan and never stopped mourning him."

Personally I do think that Ronald Reagan was an impressive man and president in many ways.  However, what impresses me above all else are the actions of love for his wife which flowed from his heart for his wife and her reciprocation of his love.  Is it possible that this could be the greatest achievement of this former leader of the free world?

“Now, at last, they are together again in eternity”

And, I would add, they are now united with God, now experiencing that piercing fullness of the love and joy of God,, which they had tasted only in incipient form through their love for each other.

“For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.    1 Corinthians 13:9-10 (NIV)