Valentine Thoughts
I started a short devotional in the beginning of February called “Love like Jesus”, because I figured February is a month dedicated to love. At first, I read through the devotional and the verses and saw exactly what I expected to see. Love everyone always, regardless. Love unconditionally. Love your enemies. Love your spouse even when it’s hard. Blah, blah, blah, I’ve heard this a thousand times. Haven’t we all?
When you hear anything too often it seems like it holds less weight or loses meaning. Notice I said, “seems like”. This perception is exactly why I wanted to write about it. We know we are supposed to love our enemies, and strangers, but life happens and we sort of – forget, or get distracted. Luckily we have a day, once a year, that is all about celebrating love!
How did you celebrate love this year? Flowers? Chocolates? A Wedding, perhaps?
February 14th has become a wildly popular day for weddings. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s supposedly the most romantic day of the year. Valentine’s day is a day to celebrate and spoil the people in your life you love. It’s adorable.
What about the people you don’t love?
What about the people no one loves?
Yikes, that took an uncomfortable turn, didn’t it?
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” -Luke 6.32
According to Luke, we are supposed to love people, even if they don’t love us, and even if they can’t do anything for us, and even if they actively work against us. Good grief, that sounds like a headache, doesn’t it? Besides, how are we supposed to go about loving our enemies anyway?
Read these verses from Matthew 25:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” -Matthew 25.34-40
If you’re like me, what you internalized from the passages is that I need to donate to homeless shelters, volunteer at the food bank and find a prison visitation program to somehow get involved in. Now hold up for just on second. Those things are all well and good, but this isn’t a check list item (I love to check things off a list, it makes me feel so productive. Often, I’ll try to turn things into a checklist so I can mark them off as I go. This isn’t supposed to be like that). We are called to love with mercy and grace. We are not called to check the boxes of good deeds, we are called to truly love, and to love BIG! Big enough so that we can even look on the worst criminals and find it in our hearts to love them. Sound intimidating? Maybe impossible? We are only human after all.
Is this where we start, with loving the unlovable in a big way? For many people, that isn’t a feasible place to start. We may have to start with baby steps first (Dave Ramsey, anyone?).
We don’t start with the ability to love big if we haven’t been loving small first. By loving small, I mean loving the people you already love – but loving them better.
Small, intentional changes build up to big, life changes. It’s like money management, but with your love and the way you love people. You use mercy and grace to love the people you interact with every day, even the ones you wish you didn’t have to interact with every day.
At work when your co-worker that you can’t stand is being particularly obnoxious – love them. Love them by not bad mouthing them.
At brunch when your friends have the latest news on the couple getting a divorce down the street – love them. Love them by not airing their private business to all your friends.
At girls/guys night out when they start chirping about what their spouse did that irritated them – love them. Love your spouse by not complaining about them to other people. Love your friends by redirecting the conversation.
Take a moment to think about your day or your week and think of ONE instance where you showed someone love. How could you have changed your actions to love them better?
As we go through the rest of our post-Valentine’s Day February, try to take a moment every day to think about how you can love the people you love better, and how you can work on loving the people who are hard to love.
I suggest you write that down and make it a daily challenge. Tape it to your bathroom mirror, make it an intention.
I hope you all had a great Valentine’s Weekend, and I wanted to remind you all that Jesus loves you – even when we aren’t perfect at loving.
As always, I am but a work in progress.
Cheers.
