Valentine’s Day is a wrap! Hopefully your loved one received some flowers, maybe a box of chocolates, a Valentine’s card with sweet nothings written on it. The vestiges of this holiday are still around us with discount candy wrapped in pinks and reds, flowers in their vases as you try to make them last, and hopefully the lovely sentiments your loved one professed to you.
The modern Valentine’s Day ideals are often well-intentioned actions of conveying love for someone else. It is a sanctioned “going out of one’s own way” in order to show how much you love someone special to you. Words and cards and gifts are all ways we can express our continued infatuation and maybe even commitment toward each other.
But we as Christians know love in all its portrayals is much, much deeper than just words or actions surrounding a holiday. Our love comes not just from the well-spring of our own good intentions, but love—true love—has first been exemplified to us by our Creator God who loves us so much he sent his Son, Jesus, to show us how to truly love each other.
The love of God teaches us we not only are supposed to love those who reflect that love back toward us, but we are to love even when that love is not returned. This goes to the core of the extent to which Jesus loved us. The words to arguably the most famous verse speak to this type of love, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
This is where true love starts: Our God loves us and sacrificed everything for us. Our response to that love is not too simply receive it by accepting Jesus as our Lord & Savior and take hold of the promises of both this life and the next. Instead, our response is to turn around and share that love with everyone we encounter. For, when the question was asked of Jesus about who were supposed to love, he gave a response that not only knocked the socks off of those who heard it firsthand, but SHOULD also knock our socks off as well.
We are to love indiscriminately even those who we consider enemies. When I look at the news today we seem to have lots of enemies. Might it be the democrats? Or, is it the Republicans? Is it the immigrants who seem to be doing so much damage to our country? Or, maybe the corporate fat cats who are gaming the system? Could it be those who chose the “wrong” way to view how medicine and vaccinations and medical insurance works?
Basically, according to the news and depending on which side of the fence you are on, anyone whom you might disagree with has been labeled an enemy. The rhetoric today from the 24/7 news stations and from social media have pitted us against each other. Instead of loving each other these different platforms would have us throwing verbal bombs at each other and splintering us further and further apart.
If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ you must resist the many urges we are subjected to. It is so easy to label someone an enemy and disregard them as people, as children of God. This must not be the way! In fact, if this is your way, scripture tells us your standing with God is in question. As First John 4:7-8 states, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
Valentine’s Day is a great reminder to share love towards those we love. I hope it spurs you on to greater and greater acts of love for those in your life! However, the love we find in Christ, the love we are reminded of so often in scripture, teaches us a love that is not meant for any one holiday but for every day. A love that goes beyond all the divisions and meets people where they are at. A love that does not judge them, but a love that reflects the love of Jesus and all that he has done for us.
