Valentine’s Day (Not) in Black & White

In Saudi Arabia, the virtue and vice squad raids stores on the eve of Valentine’s Day, seizing symbols of love. They have banned all things red, heart-shaped and Valentine-related – even teddy bears. Roses can only be found on the black market. The reasoning behind this is the idea that the holiday promotes immoral relationships. Here is my defense of red hearts, roses and romance.

1. Romance is the spice of life
Life needs romance like food needs spice. And not only romance, but true expressions of love and appreciation. I like a holiday where the words “I love you” are expressed in many ways. Winning the heart of another includes finding out what makes another person come alive. This usually includes loving words and romantic, thoughtful expressions. Keep winning the heart of your husband or wife even after you are married.

2. The beauty of a rose
I cannot think of the purpose of a rose except that it is beautiful and fragrant. I think that says something about its Creator. God is in favor of beauty, color and fragrance. The color red makes quite a statement. I can’t imagine a world in black and white, or Valentines’ Day without the dramatic color of red.

3. Just curious, how are people expected to go from friendship to marriage without romance?
There has to be a way to express love to another through words and in other thoughtful ways. Many couples probably get engaged on Valentine’s Day. All things romantic are not immoral.

4. Platonic love
I always give Valentine’s Day cards and gifts to my daughters and people often give friendly Valentine’s cards to show appreciation to friends and family members. Overall, it is a great day to show love and appreciation.

5. Oh, and last but not least . . .
In favor of chocolate – it is a great day to have a sweet treat with the ones you care about.

Enjoy!

The Gift of Love (part 2)

The Bible is a love story of the greatest proportion. It is a story of intimate fellowship, followed by the greatest heartache and rejection, followed by the perfect, sacrificial act on His behalf to restore that fellowship, followed by our receiving that restorative life and intimate union by the Holy Spirit. St. Irenaeus of Lyon, one of the earliest theologians, stated: “It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness.” He described the work of God in relational terms as God the Father continually drawing us to Himself through “His hands”, the Word and the Spirit. And as we respond by stretching our hearts out to Him in love, trust and worship, we draw closer to each other in this mutual “embrace”, growing continually in our relationship with God. In light of mankind’s Fall and God’s saving work on our behalf, this image of God’s embrace is especially powerful.

Imagine standing outside of a warm house on a cold winter’s night watching a family inside enjoying an evening together. There is light and love in the home, but you are on the outside, alone and shivering in the cold, gazing through the window. Some people feel that way their entire lives. But God calls us to come inside and stay, adopting us into His family. His invitation is open, free, and much deeper and fuller than any natural, earthly example. We cannot merely look to Christ as one observing from a distance to know His love, we must be “in Christ” in a personal relationship like Paul said in Romans 8:39 “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When we place our complete trust in Him, surrendering our feeble attempts to find life apart from Him, we begin living life on an entirely different level as a new creation in Christ. Here we find eternal love and life, complete and undiminished. Only then can we love in the way that Jesus commanded us: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Here are a few ways that we can love others in the way that He first loved us. The closest example God gives us is within marriage. Marital love is ideally agape in its main expression, as in Paul's exhortation in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” In order to restore us to perfect fellowship with God, death and suffering were required. Redemption cost more than creation. In principle, when you are facing a relationship that has been marked by pain or brokenness, you are making a choice to love out of commitment, not out of emotions. This takes a supernatural kind of love that you receive from God. During times like this when you experience pain in a marriage relationship, parent/child relationship or friendship, you may ask yourself: Will I ever feel again? But death is followed by resurrection life. It is possible for a difficult or broken relationship to be restored to a place of health and emotion again, and even if it is not, for the person who is walking with God to experience wholeness and demonstrate love and forgiveness.

Receiving God’s gift of love is intrinsically bound together with receiving His forgiveness and walking in His ways. The person who is forgiven much, loves much and we are living in a world that is in dire need of powerful, real expressions of the love of God through our lives. Some people unnecessarily experience pain over and over again in relationships because they are seeking answers from people that they should be getting from God. You cannot find answers to the deep questions of your soul or derive meaning in life from people. These are questions such as: Am I worth it? Am I loveable? Am I beautiful? Am I valuable? You have to take these questions to God or you will try to draw life from the wrong source and hurt your relationships. However, when you have a deep, abiding relationship with God and find your value and purpose in Him, you can give to others throughout your life.

The Gift of Love

In keeping with the "love month", here is the first in a series on love.

The greatest joys and deepest heartaches come from our relationships. As C. S. Lewis said,
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Natural love can only take us so far before we find ourselves wanting to quit or lock our hearts away and throw away the key. Love involves risk because it involves another human being. But there is no risk with God. In the Bible we find the statement that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), which draws us to seek out the true meaning of the breadth and depth of that love. The word “love” has been weakened through overuse in trivial contexts such as having an affinity for a certain thing or in the carnal sense when someone really means “lust”. Let’s face it, the word “love” has been watered down like bad coffee that is no longer potent enough to wake you up in the morning.

The powerful, full-orbed love of God, agape, is best described in 1 Corinthians 13 and best demonstrated in Romans 5:8 and elsewhere when He showed His great love for us through Christ’s death on the cross to save us while we were still sinners. In 1 Corinthian 13:4-8, love is described in the following way: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis differentiates between divine “gift” love or agape and “need” love which includes the three other Greek words for love: phileo (friendship), storge (affection) and eros (sexual or romantic love). We have relational needs that are undeniably met through all four loves as God intended, but natural or human love cannot meet our needs on the deepest level. Our hearts seek for a perfect love and can only be satisfied fully when we receive the perfect love of God through knowing and responding to Him because God created us in His image, to thrive in relationship with Himself.

We must receive the gift of God’s love, which transforms and empowers us to love regardless of the response of another and to have health in our souls when we lack any of the natural forms of love. We are created to worship, so we will either worship God or something else. Whatever thrills you or fills you can, to the same degree, feel like it is going to kill you when it is no longer available. We can become addicted to what gives us pleasure and when that person or thing is no longer available, emptiness can be the result unless we are drawing life from God, who is constant in love. On one level, life is a series of longing, fulfillment and letting go. This teaches us to go to God where we can live on a higher level, having our needs met in Him. Sometimes our attempts to find fulfillment any other way are thwarted so we are left in the position of needing to respond to God.

In the natural sense, the bottom line in why we go after certain things comes down to a basic question of need: What do I want? Or what do I believe I need? There is a vivid scene from the film “Merlin” in which Merlin finds the woman he loves, but they are both advanced in years. They look at one another with longing in their eyes, with the flickering light of shared memories, but their bodies are old. He summons his last powers to turn back the clock for both of them and they are temporarily restored to youth and vigor. Then he smiles at her, takes her hand and leads her into a tent. The scene is one of restoration, beauty, love and anticipation. I describe that scene because something that mankind always passionately yearns for and needs is eternal love and life. The cry of the heart is that emptiness, loneliness, longing and death be now and forever swallowed up in completeness, love and life where no power of hell can penetrate. Is it not? The great news is that God does this. Yes, He starts the process now and brings it to fruition in eternity. We thirst because there is such a thing that quenches our thirst: water. We desire eternal love and life because God intends to fulfill that desire.