Rightly Do They Love You

I was born and raised in a Polish Catholic family. I went to a Catholic church and believed in all the traditions and rituals. When I was 6 and received my first holy communion, I really believed God came into me with the communion host. Later, I became an altar boy, believing that God was in the little tabernacle on the altar and I could be closer to Him by serving with the priests. It wasn’t until my later teens that I put aside the Catholic faith. Moving to Des Moines, IA for school, I started searching for peace and happiness. I believed that there were many ways to find these. Eventually there began to be a gnawing within me about the meaning of life. I encountered some Jesus people who brought back to memory my early thoughts about God. They told me that Jesus was the way to God and it seemed that within 6 months I had encounters with about 1/2 dozen different people talking to me about Jesus. Subsequently, I began to attend an evangelical church and received the Lord.

It would be nice to say my life was totally changed, but it wasn’t. Over the next few years I wandered and when I moved back to Milwaukee I started dating my future bride, who previously had become a Christian.

Eventually we started seeking the Lord together and began to genuinely have an intimate contact with Him. We went to 4 or 5 different groups and could find only a handful of believers in each congregation who were seeking the Lord. We decided to have our own bible study and, a few months later, ran into a brother who knew the Lord in a deeper way. Here, finally, was another person excited about the Lord and desiring to know Him in a fuller way. He invited us to meet with the group He was with and, with them, we were astounded to find a whole congregation of people loving Him, enjoying Him, and growing in Him. Within a year we were meeting with this group and, up to today, 30 years later, they and we (my wife and I) have been loving Him, seeking Him and finding our satisfaction in Him.

Song of Songs 1:1-4 says:

"Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. For Your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils have a pleasant fragrance; Your name is like ointment poured forth; there fore the virgins love You. Draw me; we will run after You. The King has brought me into His chambers. We will be glad and rejoice in You. We will extol your love more than wine. Rightly do they love You."

—D.R.