Another Valentine’s Day has come and gone. I have to admit, I find myself a little jaded about Valentine’s Day. Only to my family (and now, to you) I call it “Forced Romance Day,” created by the card and candy manufacturers to pressure saps like me into acknowledging our wives, when we’ve frankly been pretty lazy about it the other 364 days of the year.
Gratefulness and appreciation are good things, given to us by God to draw us closer to Him. There’s no doubt whatsoever we should be cultivating gratefulness for our spouse and others who we love, and expressing those ideals regularly. And, while I may be cynical about the commercial holiday known as Valentine’s Day, I am anything but cautious about love. But so much of the sentiments captured on Valentine’s Day are as far from the heart of love as those chalky little heart candies with the sayings on them are to a full steak dinner to satisfy and sustain us.
The real Saint Valentine was, according to most, a third century priest who ministered to persecuted Christian in the Roman Empire until he was himself martyred. His history is no doubt appropriate, because the sacrificial heart and beauty of the actual Valentine has very little to do with rom-com romance. Far from the disturbing, pheromone-laced descriptions B-list celebrities have their public relations people publish for them on social media, love, like Saint Valentine himself, is deeper, more intense, tragic, and beautiful.
Love is the single mom sending herself flowers because no one else will, working at least two shifts to create a better world than she ever dreamed for the two young lives sleeping in the next room, her very soul aching as she asks God silently for strength and wisdom she never saw modeled, praying and working late into the night…
Love is the widower sitting alone, now with only his memories to keep him warm, reflecting on the years of patient, constant care he gave her as he watched her slowly fade into the recesses of her clouded mind, considering each precious day God provided an honor and a privilege…
Love is that couple, those two who just keep hanging on, doggedly sticking it out long past the time you thought (and maybe even shamedly hoped) they’d throw in the towel, realizing they’ve come too far to turn back or to start over with some new thing, maybe even realized that “staying in it for the kids” is a heck of a reason to endure, day after day, week after week, believing in their soul that the purpose of all this was even more about holiness than happiness…
Love is that parent, bathed in sweat and prayer and begging God for the life of that kid, heartsick over what she’s become, yet never relinquishing hope that tomorrow will be the day her eyes will be open, or she’ll quit whatever it is she’s into, or she’ll come back, or she’ll finally turn to Jesus and stop running…
Love is the teacher racking his brains for the way to reach that student, the one everyone else seems to have given up on because they’re so much trouble or they can’t seem to be reached. Love gives that teacher vision, to see beyond what everyone else sees, to the brilliance, or the beauty, or the gift, that God has placed deep in there, a treasure deeply hidden and waiting for someone who will care enough to unearth it…
One of my favorite stories in Scripture is Paul at Lystra. He is angering the Jews there because he has the gall to preach the life-saving gospel to the people. The Jews stir up the crowd, dragging Paul outside the city, stoning him, and leaving him to die. Paul gets up, brushes himself off, and, amazingly, walks back into the city to continue to preach. Love is like that.
Love is like that. It keeps coming back for more. When its heart is maligned, misunderstood, shattered into pieces, guts exposed, hurt beyond measure, love presses deeply into the One who is love, finding the strength and courage, like Paul after being stoned and left for dead, to get up, dust off, and return to God’s people to love again.
And, in the process, the lover is transformed. Ann Voskamp talks about this transformational love:
Jesus risked Himself on me. How can I not risk my life on you? You may not love me back. You may humble me, humiliate me, reject me, shatter my heart, and drive the shards into my soul—but this is not the part that matters. What matters most is always the most vulnerable communion. …What matters is that in the act of loving we become more like the givenness of Love Himself. What matters most is not if our love makes other people change, but that in loving, we change…. regardless of anything or anyone else changing, the success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving.
This love comes from laying our hearts bare to the One who bore the Cross for us, by being pressed so deeply into the Lord that you recognize you are the Beloved, one so deeply cherished, deeply honored and loved that your Father did not even spare the excruciating death of His most precious Son to recapture your heart and draw you back to Him. When you truly realize you’re loved like this, piercing through the lies you’ve been told by those who intentionally hurt you and those who were just doing the broken best they could, the truth that you are deeply, profoundly loved causes your heart to spill over into this kind of extravagant love for those around you. Even if they hate you, malign you, or revile you. Because even then it aligns you to the heart of the One who loves you infinitely, to eternity and back.
I’m a sucker when it comes to love, because love is the greatest force in the universe, “stronger than death” as Solomon says, killing the grave, the very essence, nature, and character of God Himself. And, celebrating and sharing that kind of love–severe, tenacious Calvary love- makes every day Valentine’s Day.
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