Happy Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is a Hallmark holiday, a day to celebrate the people we love – especially those we call lovers.  For some, this will be the first Valentine’s Day they have celebrated together; for my husband and me, this will be our 39^th time to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

The love we share with others is very special and comes in various forms: we love our spouses, we love our children, we love our parents, we love other family members, and we love our friends.  Each type of love looks slightly different, but all forms of real love have the same source: God’s love for us (1 John 4:19).

We are able to love others because God first loved us.  He is the one who showed us what love is all about when he sent his Son as a sacrifice for us.  He also gave us a complete description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, which all of us fail to live up to (to some degree) in our love relationships.  Nearly 40 years ago, a song was written for a wedding that paraphrased these verses and helps us to understand what love should look like on a daily basis:

Love is patient, love is kind

Love isn’t jealous, full of pride

Love thinks of others first before it’s satisfied

Love is an action, brought from feeling deep inside

Love forgives the other’s wrong

Love doesn’t hold a grudge for long

Love doesn’t look for ways to even up the score

Love takes a chance on pain to help the other more

Love defends its own from loss

Love trusts no matter what the cost

Love always hopes, though it seems all hope is gone

Love perseveres until life’s battle has been won.

In 2017, love is a frivolous word that seems to have lost most of its meaning.  We use it to describe things like our companionship with our pets and our preference for certain foods.  We also use it for political and social gain, trying to shame or ostracize others that we believe are not properly exhibiting our broader definition of the word.

But God has not only outlined the qualities that describe real love, he also makes it clear what love should lead to: “. . . let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).  Real love isn’t about what we say or how we feel about those we claim to love; it has its basis in what God says about them and manifests itself in what we do for them.  Real love is action.  And every person deserves love because all are created in the image of God and loved by him first.

 

As we celebrate with our loved ones this Valentine’s Day, let’s focus not only on “warm fuzzy feelings” but also on the true characteristics of love as God intended it and modeled it for us.  Then let’s spend the next year reminding ourselves how to truly love everyone that he puts in our path and asks us to love.  We love, because he first loved us.