Valentine’s Day can seem like the shoddiest of all holidays.
Sappy drug store and supermarket displays mock the saint’s devotion to Christ and I wonder if this is a metaphor of my life and my attempts at loving God and those he places all around me.
Holidays happen to help us emulate someone or celebrate some significant event. It’s never more apparent than at Christmas when some people actually do seem to “get in the spirit” when you bump into them in those very same store aisles. They wish you a great holiday season. They’ve caught some kernel of the actual holiday.
As I look at the heart-shaped balloon waving from being blown by the store’s heating vent, I wonder how much I’ve learned about love and from whom.
Valentine lived seventeen hundred years before me. No luck there.
But I was born into a loving family. Score!
And then there were churches where limitless examples of love were expressed - many unknowingly; so natural, but with great impact.
When I was in my late twenties, God gave me a spiritual father who walked with me through thirty years of ups and downs and all arounds.
He showed me such great love in such small ways. As odd as it sounds, he became my Valentine.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: We don’t learn of love so much as we catch love and it’s the greatest of witnessed portals to heaven. Tertullian wrote that pagans in third century exclaimed, “See how they [Christians] love one another.” The only pure love is from God. When the Holy Spirit fashions in us the heart that Valentine had for Christ, we have something more to give away (and receive) than a box of chocolates.
By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.
Jesus as recorded in John 13:35 NKJV