“Forever” is a long time.
“Always” is time, plus the keeping of a promise. In a way, it transcends time itself.
If someone would say “I will love you forever,” you like the sound of that because you long for certainty. We want to have good things like love last forever. But saying it now is one thing and proving it over time, like forever, is quite another thing. Things like love have to lived out (and a lot can happen along the way). Life can be rough and emotions can change.
“I love you always” is different. It is present tense and active, continuous involvement and action. “always” never leaves you alone long enough to consider being without. How long will it last is not even an issue. Always is eternal. It is forever. It is everlasting. It rises above the temporary conditions of this world to a level that is beyond what any human being, male or female can keep or promise.
In marriage, we promise to love one another “to have and to hold, as long as you both shall live.” But when one person dies, the situation changes. There is no “always.”
Enter God. Eternal. Consistent in being and personality. the Great “I AM” is the same forever. The promises He makes ,He actively keeps – “always.”
“?I am with you always” – Jesus (Matthew 28:20)
There is no certainty; no “always” in life apart from the One who is able to keep His promises – forever and always.
“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”
2 Corinthians 2:14
