Valentine’s Day 2005

The day of love!

Valentine’s day is one of those strange holidays that has become a cultural phenomenon by leaving people out.

• Mother’s Day — what about all the women out there who don’t or can’t have kids?
• Halloween — what about all the people who don’t really go for all that ghosts and goblins stuff (not to mention the religious overtones, but I’m not going there today.)
• April Fool’s Day — what about all us smart people? :-)

Valentine’s day is one of the worst; however, because it causes us to focus on one particular kind of love… romantic love, and it leads us to forget about the other aspects of love, and it leaves out a lot of people who are not experiencing any kind of romantic love today. Perhaps you are one of those people for whom Valentine’s Day is just a reminder of something you don’t have.

Now, of course, we all realize that there are more kinds of love out there than the romantic, mushy kind of love popularized by our culture. I like that kind of love, by the way, but focusing on that kind of love causes us to miss out on the deeper, more meaningful kind of love.

1 John 3:16
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

The deepest, most meaningful kind of love is sacrifice.

On this Valentine’s Day, let’s try to remember the best model of love that there has ever been—Jesus himself. He showed love to us through sacrifice. He died for us, so let’s show that kind of love to other people too. Let’s make some sacrifices this week to show others that we love them. After all, making sacrifices can be really romantic too!