Happy Valentines Day!!

Growing up, I always looked forward to Valentines Day.  It was a day when we gave each other chocolate, hung hearts up all over, the day when Mom would make the table beautiful with surprises before we woke up, and the day when we got a great steak dinner.  What is there not to like about it?  Besides, it was the day that we talked about love and my name means love.  It's like a holiday that I'm named for.

When I came to college though, I started to hear what others thought about the day.  It was not so good as what I thought.  Valentines, many of the people around me would say, is the day when you realize that you have no man (or woman for the men) in your life.  It is "single awareness" day.  Really, that's just stupid.

In Life Together by Deitrich Bonhoeffer, he writes about true love.  In this book he makes a clear argument how we, as people of God can love in one of two ways.  We can love with a love that is human love or we can love with a love that is spiritual love.  This human love has its roots in what I can gain from loving another person.  When that other person does not do what is expected, I become offended and my "love" turns to hatred.  Loving in a proper spiritual way has its roots in Christ.  I will love others for who they are in Christ.  There is no expectations that hang on to this kind of love, but simply a giving motivated by Christ.  Spiritual love is not downtrodden with expectations, but joyful in sacrifice.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, 

I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, 

and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, 

but have not love, I am nothing . 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 

and though I give my body to be burned, 

but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 

does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 

does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 

bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.