Valentine's Day

It’s Valentine’s Day - the day most people pretend to hate because they either don’t feel loved, or don’t want to show love, but also because they always wish the love they had was more intense, more real. So, it’s the day that we eat candy and have nice dinners and buy flowers and try to imagine a love more powerful.  But for the most part, people are disappointed because they see that even love itself is too often a fleeting feeling that we can’t create even in the perfect of circumstances. That’s why love can’t be defined in terms of experience, merely, but must be defined in terms of underlying reality, eternally. We long for a reality that shapes every day and every thing, not relegated to the convenient or designated times.

God is love (1 John 4:8). He is not love because we exist. That would mean he needs us to be who he is. We exist because of his love. Without that love of the Father, there would be no reason for us. That is the underlying eternal reality. Because God is love, there has never been a day in all of existence that wasn’t defined by love. Love itself is the foundation and groundwork; it is the structure and frame, the heartbeat and skeleton, the flesh and blood that reverberates throughout each day. So, why do we not feel it moment by moment?

If God is love and God upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) would not love then be even the ruling reality of the universe? It’s more than foundational; it’s governmental as well. The love of God sustains the entire cosmos. Love then is meant to be intense and real because God himself is intense and real and God himself is love.

So, here on Valentine’s Day, we look out on all those disappointed in the world. Their experience of love isn’t working. They feel let down. They feel betrayed. They feel as if something as good as love should be more real and so why isn’t it? Simply put, their eyes are too low.

God is love. I love, but I’m not Love. But God is. So, on Valentine’s Day, if we want love, we have to raise our sights to him. We wouldn’t go to someone who has water and expect for them to be the satisfying reality of water. We must go to the water itself for that. So, if we want real love, shouldn’t we go to the source? And the good news is that this Love isn’t unavailable to us. He is there. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Do you want a love that exceeds even the most thrilling of Valentine’s Days? Go to him and get it. After all, it’s the most real thing in the universe. Ultimate reality is a God who is love.