Daily Word of Grace # 251 (May 28, 2021)
The classic 1967 film The Graduate has an equally classic soundtrack by the incomparable Simon and Garfunkel. This soundtrack includes an often overlooked gem called “April, Come She Will” in which they sing about the fickleness of human love over the course of an affair that only lasts a few months: “April, come she will when streams are ripe and swell with rain. May, she will stay, resting in my arms again. June, she’ll change her tune, in restless walks she’ll prowl the night. July, she will fly, and give no warning to her flight. August, die she must, the autumn winds blow chilly and cold. September, I’ll remember, a love once new has now grown old.” The bad news is that human love can often be this fickle, this short lived—and leaves us echoing the cry of British singer Howard Jones, “I need an everlasting love.” The good news is that divine love, God’s love, is never fickle but always faithful, never short lived but always everlasting. In Psalm 136 the psalmist, referring to God’s love, repeats the phrase “for his steadfast love endures forever” twenty-six times. The historical and definitive expression of this faithful and everlasting love of God is in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as Jesus said in perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Love and Prayers,
Dave