On True Love
I used to hate Valentine’s Day as a single. I thought it was ostracizing, isolating, embarrassing, excluding.
A holiday about love… that makes you feel like that? No thanks!
As a happily married person, I still feel myself playing the comparison game and fighting for contentment in a world that reminds us, “You aren’t good enough. Just a little bit more.” More time or flowers or romance or fancy dinners or whatever grass is greener.
But Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about overpriced flowers and idolatrous worship of romantic love in a sexualized, pornographic culture of materialism that screams, “This is all there is! This must be the pinnacle of the human experience!”
(OK. Am I allowed to say that?)
Valentine’s Day can be about true love. Love that isn’t just romantic and sexualized.
Love that is pure and kind. Love that is patient. Love that does not boast (and doesn’t require posting gifts to social media?). Love that trusts. Love that hopes. Love that perseveres.
Hmm… this is starting to sound familiar?
<(It’s from 1 Corinthians 13)>
God is love and the author of love.
I’m taking back Valentine’s Day. And celebrating true love. Both God’s love for me and the love I can offer to others because of the love He already has extended to me.
So, new traditions.
We reminded ourselves that God created us in love to love Him. The fact that we exist is because of His love for us. And in receiving His love, we can love ourselves and offer love to others.
This year we made hearts and wrote out the names of all the people we love. All the people we wish well and pray for and hope the best for. All the people we want to receive God’s love.
We prayed for all those hearts on the tree and trusted in faith that the God of love heard our prayers.
Let’s take back Valentine’s Day. I can’t think of a better time to remember that we are God’s Beloved.
Maybe my kids will marry; maybe they will not. Does it really matter? The best way I can prepare them to love themselves and love others is point them to God who is Love. To God who loves them.
They can know true love married or single. Marriage is not a god. They are already enough and they will be enough. My single friends are not somehow less; my married friends are not somehow more.
God is love. We don’t fight for it. And we aren’t left out of it. We don’t wait for it. It’s already extended to us. We don’t earn it. We rest in it.
And this is what I want each of them to know: Remember Whose You Are
You are God’s Masterpiece. God has created you for His glory.
You are not alone. God is with you.
You are enough. God’s grace is sufficient.
You are God’s beloved. God has chosen you as His child.
You are forgiven. God has sent his Son to redeem you.
You are included as an heir to the Kingdom. God has secured your inheritance with a deposit of his Holy Spirit.
You are God’s ambassador. God has a job for you to do that only you can do.
We can love because He first loved us.
I love this quote…
“When we enter into the household of God, we come to realize that the fragmentation of humanity and its agony grow from the false supposition that all human beings have to fight for their right to be appreciated and loved. In the house of God’s love we come to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and thus recognize all people, whatever their race, religion, sex, wealth, intelligence, or background, belong to that same house. God’s house has no dividing walls or closed doors. “I am the door,” Jesus says. “Anyone who enters through me will be safe” (John 10:9, JB). The more fully we enter into the house of love, the more clearly we see that we are there together with all humanity and that in and through Christ we are brothers and sisters, members of one family.”
— Henri Nouwen