When Love is Enough
When Love is Enough
A poem by Glendon Caballero
This is the story of love
This is the story of marriage
This is the story of life
Long ago and far away
In the red and restless aches of youthful love
The sages warned you with earnest tones
That love is not enough
“Love alone can’t go supermarket
Love alone can’t raise pickney
Love alone can’t pay rent or mortgage
Love can’t buy baby formula
Love is not enough.”
So you bust the books
Wrote the best resumes
Interviewed for the jobs
Or you bought the tools
And the thermos
And awaked at dawn to learn the trade
Or you ploughed the land
Planted corn, and peas, and potato
And looked market
So you could afford the supermarket aisle
So you could marry and raise proper children
So you could pay the rent
And the light bill and the water bill
So you could buy the baby formula
And you wondered whatever happened to love!
“They told us love wasn’t enough”
Love kept you strong and true working long and tedious hours
Love cheered you on when you got promoted
Love comforted you when you got fired or passed over
When the long weeks dragged on without a job
When storms and drought destroyed the crops
Love kept you warm when the bills overtook payday
Love kept you united when the utilities went unpaid and disconnected too
Love kept you awake to care for crying babies in the middle of the night
“Love endureth all things”
Love gave you patience to work nine to five
Then come home to cook and clean and submit though tired
Love made you listen to the endless tales of nothing important really
Just to hear your lover’s voice
Taught you to forgive each other
To kiss and make up and pray knee to knee
Love woke you up to create breakfast out of yesterday’s leftovers and tomorrow’s crops
When those who should know better blamed you for not doing better
When those who did not know better said you were doing well
“Love beareth all things”
And love found time for God and church and friends and family
Remember prayer
And love found time for SabbathSchool and divine service, and bible class and AY and vespers
Please remember prayer and bible study and witnessing
And love found time for crusade and revivals and retreats and camps
And love found time for weddings and funerals and birthday parties
And love found time for picnics, and country trips, and cold foreign towns
And love kept you going despite racism and classism and every other ism
Love gave you courage in the midst of failure and disappointment
“Love hopeth all things.”
Love rejected praise of men and sought God’s holy temple
To share the word in truth
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal”
Love kept you humble in the midst of worldly success
To fall on your knees and thank God for the Honda,
Even when it wouldn’t start
For the house even when it leaked
For the husband even when he got on your last nerve …woman you understand
And happy healthy children, love hugged them when unhappy and healed them when unhealthy.
For the laws and the prophets have two great commands:
Love the Lord thy God and love thy neighbour
God’s book of love implored you to obey and claim the blessings:
“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands all these blessings will come upon you:
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock – the calves of your herd and the young of your flocks
Your basket and you kneading trough will be blessed
You will be blessed when you go in and blessed when you go out.”
Love is of God the Giver of good gifts
So love taught you how to share your daily bread
With church, with family, with friends, with neighbours
And thanked God for the hands that gave to you as well
Yes thank God for the cross where He gave all
For God so loved the world He gave the Son
For God is love
And love is enough
“Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.”
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it”
“The end of all things is near
Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so you can pray
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
For God is love
And love is enough