Surprise

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and there will be plenty of talk about love and romance. Unfortunately, while the world might get caught up in the celebration, we recognize that the characteristics of love, as defined and exemplified in Scripture, are often not expressed in modern-day relationships, in a "me-centered" culture.  So, we should take a few moments to reflect on the One who first loved us.  From 1st Corninthians 13 (ESV), where we can read:
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends.

About two and a half years ago, I featured a conversation on The Meeting House on Faith Radio with a lady by the name of Carolyn Weber.  When she went to college in England at Oxford University, her desire was not to follow the Lord.  As Tim Challies wrote in his review of her book, Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir:  "When Carolyn Weber arrived at Oxford University to begin her post-graduate studies, she felt no need for God and had no interest in him."  He continued: "As a blooming academic, she had few mentors or models who could show that faith is not only compatible with intellectual pursuits, but that it actually enhances them."  He wrote: "But the Lord had plans for Weber."

God expressed His plan through a young man she met who shared the gospel with her.  As Challies said: "The message resounded in her heart and mind. She spent 2 terms pondering that message, learning more about it, fighting against it, reading the Bible and engaging in conversation with anyone who would speak to her. She knew that the Lord was pursuing her and she eventually began to pursue him in return."

He shared: "Weber battles through the authority of the Bible, the person and work of Jesus, the ways in which her feminist worldview had shaped her perception of God and on and on. She covers a lot of ground here. There is consistently war between what she wants to believe and what she knows she needs to believe."

Challies also says: "There are 3 dimensions to this love story—love for Oxford, love for a young man, and love for a Savior. The three are interwoven and inseparable; each one is fascinating.

There is also a movie version of the book; Kennedy Unthank of Plugged In from Focus on the Family cautions that the movie does depict a conversion story; from darkness to light, if you will.  There is coarse language, and he related that there is "an argument to be made that these realistic depictions of people’s choices make the power of this testimony even stronger."  He complimented the reality of the story and said, "Surprised by Oxford also depicts an intellectual pursuit of Christ—the one study where genuine knowledge will eventually explode into complete joy, regardless of our circumstances. The story takes us on that journey, and it perfectly balances between saying too little about Christ and pushing Christian messages in places where they’d feel forced."

Jana Harmon of the C.S. Lewis Institute, in a conversation for her Side B podcast, quoted from Weber:

Yes, I would say all those things worked together. A lot like Lewis. Feeling like, in some ways, a very reluctant convert, and yet, there is this moment... For me, there was a moment. I remember it was actually Valentine's Day back in 1994, where I got to a point where I thought, "Okay, I've kicked against this." I kicked against this, and it wasn't necessarily that they were all intellectual answers, although many of them were. As I mentioned before, the Bible just makes common sense oftentimes, or even the things that are complicated or difficult, there's a lot of practical feedback, but as an academic, I also get frustrated with people who denounce the Bible or drive around with their Darwin inside of their Christian fish bumper stickers, and they probably never cracked open a Bible. And I think, "You know, I've been like that, too," so just read it. Just read it, cover to cover, and then see. At least you'll have the fodder to make an argument. That's probably the academic in me, you know. Know your sources and at least have read the book before you criticize it. But you might have something that you respond to or your heart responds to.

This story can be a reminder of God's pursuit of us.  The love that draws a person into salvation through Jesus Christ.   We love, because He loved us first, and Carolyn Weber shows us that as we seek to know Him, He will meet us there.

We can also be reminded that God will govern our choices - that includes the big decisions on who we will date and eventually marry.  God is the One who can energize and expand the "love" that we think we have and give us a love not of this world that we can know we have for another person.  A love in which we can grow over the years, just as my wife, Beth, and I have experienced.   Rather than allow the world or our own viewpoint to define love for us, we can go to the author of real love and seek out what He has for us.