What is it to be a Bride?

You know, it's strange at first to know that God calls us His bride. Especially as a man I found it uneasy to be referred to in a feminine nature. What is a bride to me? What does it means to be His bride. I think at first we hang on the idea that a bride is a woman. Which is accurate but really it falls short of the true symbolism of a bride. I can't help but think of Rachel. When Jacob fought so hard and labored so many years of his life away to be with her. It didn't matter how high to price raised or how many years it might cost him. There was no other option for him. She was his bride. 

To be a bride means to be waiting, to be engaged in, or to be recently married. When God calls us His bride its a promise. It's a covenant. And when you understand the reality of the Cross and the magnitude of His blood spilled for us and when we really get what 30 years on the earth patiently waiting and thousands of recorded years of suffering and betrayal, when the beauty of it all really hits us. We find the value of our dowery to be infinite. That no matter what the price was, he would have paid it from His own flesh. 

Like His heart breaks so profoundly and so deeply by our misery that His hands stretch out to heal our bodies and our hearts. Like he literally bore our sickness. If we're honest, when we love someone how often we desire to bare their burdens and heal their sickness. Like we'd take the cancer straight from our grandparents body. Like we'd take it ourselves. If we could just take the broken heart of our daughters and bare that even for a little while. We'd gladly lift the stress of our brides day. And there in the midst of all that wishing and desiring there stands our groom.

His body eaten by cancer. His shoulders burdened by stress and his brow wrinkled with broken-hearted-ness. Hanging gladly on Calvary. What's it mean to be His bride? To be sought after. To be desired with such jealousy that it consumes oceans and planets. To be purchased at such an outrageous price. To have such a debt paid. Hosea 3:2

We are engaged in such a love story this would has only ever known once. To be His bride is to know salvation. Is to exceedingly expect His arrival. It is to know our true worth. It is to be loved.