Five Hours in a Honda Civic Hatchback
Friday, December 19, 2025
"I give to you and you give to me,
True love, true love.
So on and on it'll always be,
True love, true love.
For you and I
Have a guardian angel on high,
With nothin' to do.
But to give to you and to give to me,
Love forever true." - Lyrics to "True Love" from the movie, High Society
Deanna and I met at a wedding in June 1984 and over the next 12 months, we conducted a long-distance courtship. It included almost daily letters, weekly phone calls, and a personal visit every other weekend. Most of the time, I made the five-hour roundtrip from Merchantville, NJ to Big Cove Tannery, PA in my Honda Civic hatchback, but Deanna made the trip to South Jersey once or twice on a Greyhound bus.
Simply put, we were in love and didn’t want to be apart any more than necessary. I guess that’s why I proposed that November and we tied the knot the following June. Forty years later, I love my beautiful bride more than ever!
My friend, as hard as it is to imagine, God feels the same way about you and me. Yes, He loves us so much that He sent His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins so that we could spend eternity with Him in heaven. But it doesn’t stop there. When we come to saving faith in Christ, He sends the Holy Spirit to indwell us so that we will never be alone (John 14:16-18; Hebrews 13:5).
Not only that, but Jesus was so anxious to come to earth and redeem His people that He made frequent visits before His incarnation. We call them Christophanies, which comes from the Greek words Christos (Christ) and phaino (to appear). Here is how Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers”, explains those very special visitations…
“When the world was set upon its pillars, He was there, and He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. Many a time before His incarnation, He descended to this lower earth in the similitude of a man—on the plains of Mamre (Genesis 18), by the brook of Jabbok (Genesis 32:24-30), beneath the walls of Jericho (Joshua 5:13), and in the fiery furnace of Babylon (Daniel 3:19 & 25).”
Sounds like a true-life love story to me!
“We love Him because He first loved us.” I John 4:19 (NKJV)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
