How was your Valentine’s Day spent? If you are single, maybe you spent the day with someone special. If you are a mother of young children, you may have had at least one school party to attend or a group of kids to bake for. If you are a grandmother, you “oohed” and “ahhed” at the homemade valentines your grandchildren bestowed on you. Or if you are like me, a “’tweener”, someone whose children are grown, but unmarried and childless, you wished your kids a great day and went out to dinner with your husband.
Valentine’s Day in our culture is associated with manifestations of love. A radio commentary I heard this week said Americans, on the average, spend more than a hundred dollars for valentine remembrances.
Wow!
About all I ever do is find and fill an appropriate container—a red cup, a heart-shaped dish, a cellophane goody bag—with valentine candy and bake some heart-shaped cookies. My husband and I try a new restaurant. Sometimes we exchange some small token of affection. I have a figurine he gave me years ago that I cherish and an angel that keeps my rings in her platform. The flowers have faded and the candy has been eaten. Our gifts might have cost us ten dollars. Tops. Do we love each other any less? No.
But this manmade kind of love is not love in its truest form. That kind of love happened when the God of the universe sent his son to earth. Jesus became the personification of God’s love for us. His rejection, mockery and death at the hands of those He came to save was borne with resolve and dignity.
John 3: 14,15,16,17: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Happy Belated Valentine’s Day. God loves you very much.