Today is Valentine's Day. Now I'm not really good with gift giving...my wife could absolutely attest to that. If you ever get the chance you just need to ask her what I gave her for a wedding present. First, I didn't know that I was supposed to buy here a wedding present (I thought I was enough ;) ); second, once I did figure out that I was supposed to, I was feeling pressured for it to be perfect and ended up with three presents one of which was a calendar, I think. Valentine's Day is different though. It's kinda easy. Chocolate, flowers, cards...you're in business. I'm so glad that Hallmark made it so simple for me!!
All of that to say, I was in the store today when I suddenly realized that it would not be enough for me to simply buy a gift for Marcy. I had two other girls to buy for...one is six and the other is four. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me that I have a responsibility to more than just my wife. It simply hadn't registered. So I walked out with three bundles of flowers and after being hugged and kissed by all of my girls I felt as if I had done alright. They all felt loved and appreciated...I was simply a little shorter on cash than I had planned.
An 80's song has been going through my head today...remember Foreigner? "I want to know what love is...I want you to show me." There's a lot of people in the world today hoping that someone might let them know. You know, the Bible actually has a little something to say about it...
1 John 4:7-12 states:
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."
Sadly, I sometimes feel like the impression being given within churches is that to truly be "Christian", the only thing that really matters is loving God...that our relationship with other people isn't nearly as important. These verses totally fly in the face of that idea. To truly define one's self as a Christian means that love is so much a part of who you are that everyone and everything around you feels loved...people, dogs and cats, light poles, everything. What this verse is saying is, "If you truly realized how much God loved you, nobody would doubt how you feel about them. It would be obvious to everyone that you cared." Today, it wasn't enough for me to simply buy flowers for my wife...what good would it have been for my wife to have flowers on the counter while two little girls stood weeping beneath them and wondering if daddy loved them too. As Christians it is not enough for God alone to know you love Him while people living next door to you wonder if you care at all about their lives, their issues, or their fears about the future. I want to challenge you today to expand the number of people around you who might need to know that you care. I want to challenge you, as I challenge myself, to love too much...to care too much...and to express that love to people within your sphere of influence even if they never reciprocate that love.
May the God who lives in you inspire you to see His love completed in your actions and your reactions to the people around you. May this Valentine's Day be the day where you decide to love as one who truly knows what love is. Hallmark doesn't really know...Foreigner is talking about a reunion tour and they're still hoping someone might tell them. My prayer is that you would know beyond a doubt what love actually looks like and then live that love out everyday. And then call Foreigner...they've been waiting since 1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment