Jesus stole my gal

I love you with the love of Christ.

My friend Ryan has heard this dec­la­ra­tion sev­eral times in his life. You know enough of the con­text in which this dec­la­ra­tion is made to know that it is no declaration.

Ryan is a very, very nice guy and a hope­less roman­tic. That is not to say he makes loud, grand ges­tures of affec­tion. I’d call him the strong, silent type.

Once, he and I hap­pened to meet in Lon­don because he and I were hope­lessly in love with two girls (one each) who threat­ened to have our hearts for break­fast daily. His girl was in love with some­one else, and my girl was in love with her­self and no one else. What he did in response to his girl’s new man remains one of the bet­ter ges­tures of self­less­ness I’ve seen.

His girl, who was hith­erto his long-distance girl­friend (Ipoh-Sydney) until she went to Cam­bridge to read law and become a slut, fell in love with another man who, of course, rec­i­p­ro­cated in ways her lim­ited provin­cial expe­ri­ence hadn’t shown her before. He bought her a bunch of flow­ers one day.

How did Ryan respond? He went out and bought a vase for the flow­ers. She cried buck­ets of course. But that was about as con­trite as she would get. She then loved him with the love of Christ.

Over the years, Ryan has been show­ered with enough love of Christ to last sev­eral gen­er­a­tions. Bit like hav­ing so much Christ­mas spirit you just wanna throw up. I feared the worst when ear­lier this year, he called to say he had met a girl, sev­eral years his junior, and who attended church very reg­u­larly, mean­ing not just every Sun­day, but you know, those fun fair food fair raf­fle things too.

This girl, Beth, threat­ened to love him with the love of Christ too, at first. But thank­fully for Ryan, the allure of being the older, wiser man worked in his favour for the first time in his life, and over the last half year, after attend­ing church every Sun­day plus help­ing out with her church’s food and fun fair, she’s appar­ently finally relented, and was last heard refer­ring to Ryan as her boyfriend. They went to Bali together last month, and I am cer­tain not too much time was spent por­ing over Bible pas­sages there.

Ryan came down to Sin­ga­pore with­out Beth last week, but judg­ing from his con­tented cat demeanour, things between them look good. There was no furtive SMS­ing, no check­ing for missed calls, no phone calls which required going out to the bal­cony for pri­vacy. It was all relaxed, all open, all sweet.

Not bad for a guy who’s so full of Jesus’ love he could be beatified.

I wish you both well, Ryan and Beth.

Me and my Scrab­ble mate got bored tonight, so… SW view from Kent Ridge Park, Pasir Pan­jang Hill Bat­tle Site.