Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Once a week I grab up my guitar and head for the local nursing home to sing the old songs the folks love so well.  Songs like: Billy Boy, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain. 

 The folks like all the old familiar songs, but Let Me Call You Sweetheart is the song that brings the greatest response. A dreamy look comes over each person's face along with a big smile. The song seems to bring back to everyone the memory of a certain special someone from the past. Faces that are droopy and not responsive to much around them become lively, and eyes twinkle.  If you sit down with the nursing home folks, right then, and ask them "Tell me how you met your sweetheart", years fade away as people begin to tell of long ago when the felt their first bloom of love.   

It seems impossible to believe that the residents of a nursing home ever experienced intense passion, the same kind of intense, hormonal feelings which young people are dealing with in this day and age.  However, we know that the emotions of young men and young women were just as powerful in the past.  Watching the faces and listening to the old folks relating their stories of how they first fell in love proves that!  I recently came across the photo up above for the first time.  It's my mother-in-law and father-in-law in the early 1930's as they were dating. The look they are sharing and their nearness to one another speaks volumes.

Falling in love is a robust and profound mystery.  The Bible puts it this way:
There are three things which are too wonderful for me; yes, four which I do not understand:  The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.  Proverbs 30:18,19

For this reason, I need to remember to pray for the young adults that I know- that they would be wise in who they date and that they would honor Jesus Christ with their bodies, to be chaste, until the day they wed.  I need to remember that when I pray for my young grandchildren, I should also pray for the nuturing and spiritual upbringing of their future spouses. 

Since every generation experiences afresh the strong emotions of romantic love, I would encourage any of you reading this blog to pray in a similiar manner for the young people you care about.  It may be now or very soon that the ones you know will be looking into someone's eyes and saying, "Let me call you sweetheart.  I'm in love with you!  Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too!"  We all remember what it was like.   As a result, you know why it's important to pray in this regard for the future of those you love.