The Ground for Love

A thirteenth century Chinese poet, Yuan Haowen, met a fowler on his way to the capital city for his board exam. The fowler caught a wild goose with his net. To his surprise, another goose wailed and circled around, and then dived to its death into his net. The poet bought both geese from the fowler and gave them a decent burial. He wrote a poem and was remembered to this day for its opening verse: “Where is the ground for love, that binds two lovers together, life for life, and death for death?” This question hears its echo far and wide. Whenever we see someone falls head over heels in love, even to the point of death, we are both amazed and puzzled, and even feel a little envious. Who does not want to taste a love like that? Many people do not realize that the Song of Solomon in the Bible is actually an intimate love song for young lovers. Hear this, ⁶Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. (Cant. 8:6 ESV) Indeed, we want to ask, where is the ground for love, that puts a passionate love song into the Holy Bible?

Why does the Most High God even care about human love? This is especially hard to comprehend for us Orientals. For Buddha declared all the sensuous world as illusory, and Confucius promoted self-discipline, even self-sacrifice, for the benefit of the public. Intimate love was never considered as a virtue by them. In fact, it is branded as evil in Buddhism and a selfish desire to be exterminated in Confucianism, but in the New Testament, there is a whole passage (Ephesians 4:21-33) mixed together love between a human couple and love between God and men; and the two kinds of love are treated as one. Love is even ranked above faith and hope and counted as the greatest of all (1 Cor. 13:31). Where is the ground for love? You can not find the answer on earth, because love is from God.

If Yuan only saw the kill of the first goose, at best he would praise the fowler for his skill. If he only saw the suicide dive of the second goose, he would wonder what went wrong with the bird. Only when he was able to see both deaths, seeing that the second goose chose rather to fall with than to fly without its fallen partner, then he was awestruck by the sacrificial love and cast down the heart-searching question for all of us. Similarly, we all knew the inevitable death of man, and we also heard that the Son of God came down from heaven and died on the cross. Only when we see the connection between the two, that ⁸but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8 ESV) then we are awestruck by the amazing love of God and understand the ground for love, and fall head over heels in love with Christ.

Where is the ground for love, that binds two lovers life for life and death for death? If two humans fall in love, and one lover dies, their love story ends. The other lover does not want to live on without love, that is death for death; If God loves a human, and the human dies, God would breath life into the human to continue the love story. That is life for life, because the love of God never ends. I do not know whether you have a valentine to die for, but certainly you can have one to live for, ¹⁶For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (Jn. 3:16 ESV)

Prayer: O Lord! We love, because You first loved us. You died for me and you resurrected for me, you are my valentine for death and for life. Help me love you with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all strength!