How Glad I Am

Echoes of Love

Nancy Wilson sang a beautiful song that came out in 1964. She was expressing her love for her lover, telling him the height and depth of it. It is my hope that you take the time to listen to the song before you read the rest of this little essay.

The song begins with these words:

My love has no beginning, my love has no end
No front or back and my love won't bend…

…You don't know how glad I am

The song “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am” pulses with longing and joy — a gladness born from love. It’s the kind of gladness that doesn’t just sit quietly in the heart; it stirs, it aches, it moves. The lyrics speak of being chosen, cherished, and seen. And while the song is framed in human terms, its emotional intensity gestures toward something deeper: the joy found in the love of God, which has no beginning and no end because God is love.

This gladness — personal, intimate, transformative — becomes a doorway into the mystery of divine love. God’s love is not earned through merit or sustained by performance. It is eternal, self-existent, and unchanging. It doesn’t begin when we believe or end when we falter. It simply is, because He is love.

To experience God’s love is to step into something infinite. The gladness we feel in human relationships — the kind the song celebrates — is but a shadow of the joy that comes from being embraced by the One who is Love itself.

Mark’s Opening Cry: “Immediately…”

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t ease into the story. It bursts open. There’s no birth narrative, no genealogy, no warm-up. Just a voice crying in the wilderness, a baptism, and then — immediately — the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert. The word “immediately” appears over 40 times in Mark’s short Gospel. It’s as if the story can’t wait to be told.

This urgency isn’t just literary pacing. It’s theological heartbeat. God’s love doesn’t dawdle. It moves. It breaks in. It interrupts. It heals. It calls. It casts out. It touches. It forgives. It storms the gates of suffering and death with relentless compassion.

Mark’s Jesus is always on the move — not because He’s restless, but because love is. Love doesn’t linger in abstraction. It steps into the ache. It walks into the crowd. It reaches for the bleeding woman. It lifts the dead girl. It feeds the hungry. It weeps with the grieving. It walks on water to save the ones loved, the followers who are on the verge of perishing in the storm. It confronts the powers that crush and exclude.

“You Are My Beloved”

Before Jesus performs a single miracle, preaches a single sermon, or calls a single disciple, He is declared beloved: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). This is the foundation. Not action. Not achievement. Identity. Belovedness.

This divine gladness — “how glad I am” — echoes the emotional core of the song. It’s the gladness of love that simply is. Not earned. Not conditional. Not delayed until we prove ourselves. It’s the gladness of a God who delights in His Son, and through Him, delights in us.

And from that declaration, Jesus moves. The love of the Father propels Him into the wilderness, into Galilee, into homes and synagogues and tombs. Love doesn’t stay in the clouds. It descends. It walks. It touches. It bleeds.

Love That Interrupts

Mark’s urgency is not chaotic. It’s compassionate. Every “immediately” is a collision between divine love and human need. The leper kneels. The paralytic is lowered through the roof. The demon shrieks. The storm rages. And Jesus responds — not with delay, but with immediacy.

This is the kind of love that doesn’t wait for the perfect moment. It creates the moment. It doesn’t ask if we’re ready. It comes because we’re not. It doesn’t require us to be clean. It comes to make us whole. To clean us. We are broken, individually and collectively and he came to repair us.

The gladness of God is not passive. It moves toward us. It interrupts our despair. It breaks into our silence. It speaks over our shame. It says, “I am willing. Be clean.” It says, “Talitha koum.” It says, “Peace. Be still,” not just to the raging storm outside the boat but to the storms that rage within us. “Peace. Be still.”

Urgency in Our Bones

To follow Jesus in Mark is to be swept into motion. There’s no time to pack a bag. No time to bury the dead. No time to linger in comfort. The call is now. The kingdom is near. Repent. Believe. Follow.

This urgency is not pressure. It’s invitation. It’s the pulse of love that refuses to wait. It’s the gladness of God that wants to be known — now. Not someday. Not when we’re ready. Now.

And when we hear the song’s refrain — “how glad I am” — we can imagine it as a whisper from heaven, echoing over our lives. Not because we’ve done everything right, but because we are held in the love of a God who never had a beginning to loving us and will never stop. God is saying, “You don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know, how glad I am.” But He’s going to show us His love and His gladness in more ways than we can count.

A Love That Moves Us

Mark’s Gospel is not just a story of what Jesus did. It’s a revelation of who God is. And it’s a summons. To be loved by God is to be moved by God. To be caught up in the urgency of compassion. To be swept into the gladness that heals, forgives, repairs, and restores.

The song celebrates the joy of being loved. Mark shows us what that love does. It moves. It touches. It saves.

Now, it calls us.

His love had no beginning it has no end — and now — because this is true, How Glad I Am…

 -Josiah Tilton