When you want to be inspired, you read the scriptures. When you want answers to questions burning in the depths of your very bones, you turn to the scriptures. When you want to feel God's love, you read the scriptures.
But what happens when you want to fall in love? That overwhelmingly splendid feeling that comes only from reading something ridiculously romantic?
Guess what. The scriptures can help you there too.
Though we might think of the scriptures as a list of "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" or as a great self-help guide, it is also a record of real people who lived and died and sacrificed...and loved. As a result, when we read their stories, we can find moments of such beauty, poetry, and romance that some of us truly helpless romantics can go weak at the knees. Not only that, but they remind us that the source of love is God, who showed us the greatest act of love there ever has and ever will be.
So, as you read these romantic lines from the scriptures, think of the people who penned them and the lives and love they lived.
Old Testament
Genesis 2:18, 21–24
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. …
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 29:20
And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
Proverbs 7:18
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves.
Proverbs 30:18–19
There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.
Song of Solomon 2:2
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
Song of Solomon 3:4
It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.
Song of Solomon 4:7
Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
Song of Solomon 8:6–7
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
New Testament
1 Corinthians:1–8
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.
1 John 3:18
My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
Redeeming Love
Though not romantic in the traditional sense of the word, I felt I could not write about the most beautiful demonstrations of love in the scriptures without incorporating the greatest and truest love story of all time. So, as a bonus, take some time to ponder Him who made all eternal love and joy possible.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 15:13
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
