Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the well-know  German composer, was not handsome. He had a grotesque hunchback.

     One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter named Frumtje. Moses fell hopelessly in love with her. But Frumtje was repulsed by his misshapen appearance. When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. She was a vision of heavenly beauty. After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, “Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?”

     “Yes,” she answered, looking at the floor. “And do you?”

     “Yes, I do,” he replied. “You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, the Lord announces which girl he will marry. When I was born, my future bride was pointed out to me. Then the Lord added, ‘But you wife will be humpbacked.’”

     “Right then and there I called out, ‘Oh Lord, a humpbacked woman would be a tragedy. Please, Lord, give me the hump and let her be beautiful.’”

     Then Frumtje looked up into his eyes and was stirred by some deep memory. She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand and later became his wife.

     There’s a wonderful line that describes this kind of love from the writings of the apostle Paul which says love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

     Bennett Cerf relates this story about a bus that was bumping a back road in the South. In one seat a wispy old man sat holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively he thrust the flowers into the girl's lap. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like for you to have them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.

     Love is a very special kind of gift...in order to be loved it is given without thought of a reward coming back. Let’s always remember to love in action as well as in words.

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”

1 John 4:16