“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Matthew 12:30-31 NIV)
The retail stores have changed their displays of merchandise, to remind you to show some love on Tuesday, Valentine’s Day. Home décor stores have removed everyday merchandise and replaced it with red and white items in almost every department and many of their products are adorned with heart-shaped figures. One retail store started displaying Valentine’s Day flowers two weeks early. Yes, stores want to generate sales, first and foremost, but even if it is unintentional they attract our attention to what we call love. But listen! Love does not wait for Valentine’s Day! That’s true whether you celebrate it or not. Love is not dictated by the retail stores. Love is a reality stored in the hearts of believers.
What is love? Is it something reserved for just one man-made holiday or is it something that believers focus on, naturally, everyday by choice, and by everlasting changes that accompany being new persons when we experience salvation, passing from death to life?
Whether you buy candy, flowers, or fix a special meal for someone Tuesday, or if you just go about your day interacting with others each every day and not just this coming “holiday,” remember what the Scriptures say about love. Read the opening verse again, as well as the closing verses, presented to you way ahead of Valentine’s Day; presented on this Sunday morning, early, before you get to church. Enjoy worship! Have a great day! Love you! Be blessed!
“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “Me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. Love never dies.” (I Corinthians 13:4-8 The Message Bible)
Still committed to the climb,
Mark L. King