Communion, Wonder And The Greatest Love Story

The Answer Was You

Recently, I was given the privilege of sharing my thoughts on communion at church, the words spoken over the bread and the cup as we remember the body and the blood of Jesus. It is a holy thing to stand and turn people’s hearts toward that table, and I did not want to rush past the wonder of it. I also had the joy of singing a worship song that I have written. Our Worthy King.

As I prepared, I kept thinking about how easily we grow familiar with a story we know so well. Jesus came to earth, taught, healed, died, and rose again. Sometimes we need to stop and recover the wonder of what that really means.

A deep sense of God’s peace filled me as I sat with those thoughts, and out of that peace I began writing a song called The Answer Was You. The chorus says:

The Answer was You, the Savior I never knew I needed.  Love that came and found me when my heart was lost and bleeding.

That is the wonder of Jesus. He came looking for us before we fully understood what we needed. The eternal Son of God entered our world, lived among ordinary people, and showed us what God is truly like.

His teaching was revolutionary

He welcomed the people others rejected and touched those the world called unclean. He taught us to love our enemies, to forgive those who hurt us, to care for the vulnerable, and to serve instead of seeking importance. In everything, He was showing us a completely different way to live, a life shaped by grace, mercy, truth, and love.

He saw the women everyone else overlooked

There is one part of Jesus’ life that moves me deeply as a woman and as a writer.

He lived in a time when women were so often ignored, spoken over, and left out of the conversation. A rabbi was not expected to teach them, and certainly not to seek them out. Yet again and again, Jesus turned toward the very people the world turned away from.

He sat at a well in the heat of the day and spoke honestly with a Samaritan woman, giving her some of His clearest words about worship and living water. When His disciples returned, the moment was so unusual that Scripture records their reaction:

At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman. (John 4:27, WEB)

A woman who had been bleeding for twelve years reached through the crowd to touch Him, and rather than turning away, He healed her and called her “daughter.” Mary of Bethany was welcomed to sit at His feet and learn, in the very place a student would sit. Women followed Him, supported His ministry, and stood near the cross when almost everyone else had fled.

And when He rose from the grave, the first witness was not a king or a religious leader. It was a woman, and to her He entrusted the greatest news the world has ever heard.

In a culture that overlooked them, Jesus saw women, valued them, taught them, and trusted them. That tells us something true about His heart, and about how He sees each one of us.

But Jesus did not only come to teach us. He came to save us.

Many of us know what it is to walk in the wrong direction while believing we are on the right path. We may sense that something is missing without knowing what it is.

Then Jesus finds us.

He carried our sin and sorrow to the cross, where His body was broken and His blood poured out so that we could be forgiven and brought home to God. Because He rose again, He offers us far more than forgiveness. There is new life on the other side of that cross, a new way of living in which we can know His presence, receive His peace, walk in freedom, and follow Him step by step.

The greatest love story ever told

I write clean, faith-filled romance for a living. I spend my days shaping stories about two people who are afraid to be known, and who slowly learn that they are safe enough to stay. I love a good love story. I love the moment someone stops running and lets themselves be found.

But every romance I write is only a small echo of the greatest love story ever told, and that story is the one between Jesus and His bride, the church.

Scripture does not treat this gift of God’s love as a poetic afterthought. It runs from the prophets straight through to the final pages of the Bible:

As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5, WEB)

Paul, writing about marriage, suddenly lifts his eyes to what marriage was always pointing toward:

“For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will be joined to his wife. The two will become one flesh.” This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and of the assembly. (Ephesians 5:31-32, WEB)

And at the very end, John sees the story reach its wedding day:

Let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad, and let us give the glory to him. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready. . . . Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Revelation 19:7, 9, WEB)

He even shows us the bride herself:

I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21:2, WEB)

This is the love story underneath every love story. A Bridegroom who left heaven to win a bride who could never have earned Him. A love that pursued us before we knew we needed it. A wedding day still to come, and an invitation with our name on it.

No romance I could ever write will match it. I only get to point toward it.

Communion reminds us that this gift came at a great cost

And when we take the bread and the cup, let us not rush past what they represent.

Let us remember the One who left heaven and came to earth for us. Let us remember the mercy in His eyes, the truth in His words, the love that led Him to the cross, and the power that raised Him from the grave. Let us remember that our sins are forgiven, that we belong to Him, and that we have been invited into a completely new way of living.

May we never lose the wonder of Jesus.

He is beautiful, glorious, and pure. He is the Savior we did not always know we needed. He is the love that came and found us. He is our worthy King, the Bridegroom coming back for His bride.

So, let us eat and drink with grateful hearts, remembering all that Jesus has done for us.

If these thoughts spoke to your heart, you will find that same heartbeat in my Seacliff Shores novels: clean and wholesome Christian romance filled with grace, second chances, and the hope of being truly found.

Because the truest love story of all is the one that found us first.

You can begin with my free story, The Heart of Seacliff Shores, here