You are deeply loved!

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I hesitate to write anything about it, as so many other people already have. My daughter, in one of her boyfriend-less periods, renamed it Single Awareness Day, or SAD. Many of us have mixed or ambivalent feelings about the day, and the emotions come in a wide array. Most of you know that I am divorced. Valentine’s Day is sort of irrelevant to me.

What isn’t irrelevant is love.

There is a fairy tale about a woman who lived a blah and colorless life. She dreamed about a prince who would love her so much that he would risk his very life to save her. He would ride in and save her, killing the dragon, and swoop her off her feet and take her to the palace, where they would marry and live happily ever after.

The thing is, this isn’t a fairy tale. We live lives of quiet desperation. Jesus, our prince, loves us so much that he not only risked his life, but also gave it to save ours. Some day he will ride in, kill the evil dragon, sweep us off our feet, and take us to the palace, where he has prepared a place for us. We will be the Bride of Christ, and will live happily ever after. It is true.

The best thing about this truth is that we don’t earn it. We don’t have to be pretty enough or sing well enough or be perfectly slender and make all our own clothes. We don’t have to have fairy godmothers or magical fairies who work on our behalf. We don’t even have to love him first.

But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

He loved us, without any expectation that we might love him. He died for us with no guarantee that we would respond. He loved us perfectly, knowing how badly we would fail at loving him and loving each other. And still, he works in us and uses us to accomplish his work on earth.

This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. I John 4:10, 11

We have the perfect valentine. There’s even dinner and a love letter in it for us. We call it the wedding feast of the Lamb, and his word tells the story of how high and wide and deep is his love for us. No one else could love us like he does. And to top it off, he gives us each other.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
 we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:35-39

Happy Valentine’s Day. May you know how deeply and completely you are loved.