Boxes of Chocolates. Bouquets of Roses. Hallmark Cards. Red and Pink Color Schemes. Sweethearts Candy. Love Songs. Candlelight Dinners. Romantic Movies. Welcome to Valentine's Day, our culture's day devoted to the celebration of love.
Valentine's Day influences every level of our society on February 14th. The CVS down the street from campus has been absolutely taken over by boxes of Valentines, chocolates, and heart-shaped candies. The Vanderbilt dining hall where I ate my breakfast this morning set up tables filled with bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, and other gifts for students to buy for their boyfriends and girlfriends. The google homepage has been covered in red and pink hearts, and TV channels (not that I actually have enough time to watch TV anymore) have been announcing plans to run Valentines specials all day long today.
Valentine's Day had even infiltrated the middle school where I went to lunch today. (For those of you that don't know...I've gotten involved with Nashville YoungLife. It's awesome. And on Mondays I get to go to lunch with the girls I help to host a Bible study for.) Usually the Monday lunch conversations I get to have with these sweet 5th graders centers around their activities of the past weekend, the play practice that they go to on Monday afternoons, or the awesome last-second win in the girls' basketball game on Saturday.
But today, the girls didn't want to talk about any of those things. All day long, the guys at this school had apparently been approaching different girls and asking the classic question "Will you be my Valentine?". It was this all-important Valentine's Day match-making that formed the center of lunch-time conversation.
For the girls who had a "Valentine," the girls who had been given little love notes, the girls who had been presented with candy or even a red carnation, it was obvious that the morning had been a really good one. These girls were all-smiles. But there were other girls at the table who obviously were not enjoying Valentine's Day quite as much. These girls had hoped for a "Valentine" but no one had asked them. One of the girls even said "I don't really like boys that much. It would just be nice to know that one of them likes me."
At first, I couldn't help but feel that their dejection was a little bit ridiculous. My goodness, these girls are only in 5th grade. They're just ten or eleven years old. They don't need to be paired off for Valentine's Day. For goodness' sake, I'm in college and I'm not paired off for Valentine's Day. It's okay. But as I thought more about their situation I realized that these girls were just feeling the universal human desire to feel loved and accepted.
"It would just be nice to know that one of them likes me." Wow. This ten year old, in her school uniform, eating Lunchables chicken nuggets articulated one of the deepest desires of our hearts. As people, we are hard-wired to crave affirmation of who we are. We seek confirmation of our worth in knowing that we are loved and cared for. We long for affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support.
Knowing that others approve of us feels good. Knowing that we are loved by friends and family feels even better. But even this love doesn't fulfill our desire to be loved completely and unconditionally. No person will ever be able to satisfy us completely, for human relationships are always tainted by shadows of the possibility of rejection or withdrawal. Shadows that stem from the darkness of sin that clouds the human heart. But there is radical good news: even the best human relationships are only broken reflections of a complete love, and this complete love is offered by our gracious and glorious God, in whom there are no shadows.
The all-encompassing love of God is evidenced in countless verses throughout the Bible:
"I have loved you with an EVERLASTING LOVE; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."
Jeremiah 31:3
"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my UNFAILING LOVE for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you."
Isaiah 54:10
"There is no fear in love, but PERFECT LOVE casts out fear."
1 John 4:18
And the all-too-familiar verse that sums up the love story of the Gospel:
"For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but will have eternal life."
John 3:16
We are loved with a radical love. We are loved with a love that surpasses all understanding. We are loved with an infinite love. We are loved with an unconditional love. But far too many people around us do not understand that they are loved without conditions or limits.
So today, and everyday for that matter, celebrate love. Proclaim love. Live love. Not the "love" of Hallmark cards or romantic movies, but the all-sufficient and all-encompassing love that overlooks our fears and failures to redeem us and justify us as children of God.
Valentine's Day influences every level of our society on February 14th. The CVS down the street from campus has been absolutely taken over by boxes of Valentines, chocolates, and heart-shaped candies. The Vanderbilt dining hall where I ate my breakfast this morning set up tables filled with bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, and other gifts for students to buy for their boyfriends and girlfriends. The google homepage has been covered in red and pink hearts, and TV channels (not that I actually have enough time to watch TV anymore) have been announcing plans to run Valentines specials all day long today.
Valentine's Day had even infiltrated the middle school where I went to lunch today. (For those of you that don't know...I've gotten involved with Nashville YoungLife. It's awesome. And on Mondays I get to go to lunch with the girls I help to host a Bible study for.) Usually the Monday lunch conversations I get to have with these sweet 5th graders centers around their activities of the past weekend, the play practice that they go to on Monday afternoons, or the awesome last-second win in the girls' basketball game on Saturday.
But today, the girls didn't want to talk about any of those things. All day long, the guys at this school had apparently been approaching different girls and asking the classic question "Will you be my Valentine?". It was this all-important Valentine's Day match-making that formed the center of lunch-time conversation.
For the girls who had a "Valentine," the girls who had been given little love notes, the girls who had been presented with candy or even a red carnation, it was obvious that the morning had been a really good one. These girls were all-smiles. But there were other girls at the table who obviously were not enjoying Valentine's Day quite as much. These girls had hoped for a "Valentine" but no one had asked them. One of the girls even said "I don't really like boys that much. It would just be nice to know that one of them likes me."
At first, I couldn't help but feel that their dejection was a little bit ridiculous. My goodness, these girls are only in 5th grade. They're just ten or eleven years old. They don't need to be paired off for Valentine's Day. For goodness' sake, I'm in college and I'm not paired off for Valentine's Day. It's okay. But as I thought more about their situation I realized that these girls were just feeling the universal human desire to feel loved and accepted.
"It would just be nice to know that one of them likes me." Wow. This ten year old, in her school uniform, eating Lunchables chicken nuggets articulated one of the deepest desires of our hearts. As people, we are hard-wired to crave affirmation of who we are. We seek confirmation of our worth in knowing that we are loved and cared for. We long for affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support.
Knowing that others approve of us feels good. Knowing that we are loved by friends and family feels even better. But even this love doesn't fulfill our desire to be loved completely and unconditionally. No person will ever be able to satisfy us completely, for human relationships are always tainted by shadows of the possibility of rejection or withdrawal. Shadows that stem from the darkness of sin that clouds the human heart. But there is radical good news: even the best human relationships are only broken reflections of a complete love, and this complete love is offered by our gracious and glorious God, in whom there are no shadows.
The all-encompassing love of God is evidenced in countless verses throughout the Bible:
"I have loved you with an EVERLASTING LOVE; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."
Jeremiah 31:3
"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my UNFAILING LOVE for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you."
Isaiah 54:10
"There is no fear in love, but PERFECT LOVE casts out fear."
1 John 4:18
And the all-too-familiar verse that sums up the love story of the Gospel:
"For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but will have eternal life."
John 3:16
We are loved with a radical love. We are loved with a love that surpasses all understanding. We are loved with an infinite love. We are loved with an unconditional love. But far too many people around us do not understand that they are loved without conditions or limits.
So today, and everyday for that matter, celebrate love. Proclaim love. Live love. Not the "love" of Hallmark cards or romantic movies, but the all-sufficient and all-encompassing love that overlooks our fears and failures to redeem us and justify us as children of God.
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