February 13, 2012
It's almost Valentine's Day and believe it or not, this day has never really been my favorite holiday. In fact it's probably more like one of my least favorite holidays. Valentine's Day has always seemed like a day where you are forced to show other people (family, friends, complete strangers...) how much you ‘love’ your true love. It seems like yet another opportunity for people to play the keeping-up-with-the-Jones' game. This day has become materialistic and over-inflated. The prices for flowers, the difficulty getting restaurant reservations, the impulse to eat boxes of chocolate - OK maybe the chocolate part is pretty nice.
A romantic and flowery Valentine’s Day just doesn’t fit in my way of life anymore. I really think it is all about how my definition of love has changed overtime. Somewhere along my broken path I learned and have now come to believe it is important to say I love you and mean it and more important to show love all 365 days of each year, not just for one day. Valentine's Day was a "whatever" kind of day for me. Don't get me wrong, as a child I sent out my valentines and received a plenty. And my husband, even early-on in our relationship, has been wonderful with this day, taking me out to nice dinners, buying me the over-priced flowers, writing me love notes (my favorite by the way). But he's wonderful everyday in many ways. (Insert your “Awwww...” here but it is fact.)
In 2004 my best friend even got married to her true love on Valentine's Day so you would think my romantic sense of love would have been won over for good. But while planning for this day, I really questioned (to myself only, of course) why anyone would want to get married on this day? In one respect it seemed romantically silly, cliche. And in another respect, I thought her true love had lucked out - two for one Anniversary and Valentine's Day gifts for life. I think overtime I realized what Valentine’s day is really about.
Love starts as something romantic and flowery and full of hope for the future. It’s like Valentine’s Day every day. It’s like your wedding day everyday. It’s like singing out a Beatles tune in a crowded room, professing your love to someone. “All You Need is Love…” If you are lucky, your love will grow overtime, changing, becoming something much more tangible - a coziness that lives inside heart.
Valentine’s Day should really be about celebrating the love you have at this moment. It isn't about an elaborate gesture with expensive gifts, harps, cupids or a wedding. It just needs to be a day where you remind yourself of the love you have today - the love for your spouse or partner, the love for your family, the love for friends, the love for God – the love for being granted a life. If you remind yourself of the love you have in your life, your loved ones will be reminded of how you feel about them too. But use the other 364 days to remind them over and over because truthfully love ends up being anything but easy or romantic or a one-day celebration.
A few weeks ago, our Pastor read and started studying St. Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. You may
know it well. This love passage, recited at most weddings and funerals, has been transformed by today’s society as a definition of a couple having faith, hope & love - the greatest of these is love, according to God. Yes I am speaking of 1 Corinthians 13, specifically 4-7. It was even recited in my own wedding back in 1999 but until you study the whole chapter and the context of why it was written do you understand the true meaning.
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Too often, St. Paul's words here are read and understood as a romantic, greeting-card verse when, in fact, they address some of the most nitty-gritty circumstances of our lives. The love Paul describes here IS beautiful but it is NOT easy or romantic. This is a love that makes demands on us from the inside out, a love that asks each of us, and all of us as the church, to always put the neighbor or the spouse before the self. In this message, Paul is reminding the church (the people) that even the most faithful church is nothing without love in their heart. He teaches that you can’t have faith or hope without love – it completes the Christian soul. It is about the love that God has for His people.
This type of love is not created on any one day, even a day as love-powerful as Valentine’s Day. It isn’t the romantic, flowery, floating-on-cloud-nine kind of love. It is the losing-massive-sleep-to-comfort-a-baby kind of love. It is the understanding-and-acceptance-that-I’m-a-sinner kind of love. It is the forgiveness-after-being-wronged kind of love. It is the parent-having-to-discipline-a-child-because-it’s-best-for-them kind of love. It is the taking-the-bad-with-the-good kind of love. It is the tough-conversation kind of love. It is the kind of love that wanes, waxes, transforms and morphs as it grows old. It is the love that ends in a different place than it began. This is the love I hope everyone celebrates each and every day of the year, especially on Valentine’s Day. This is the love that indeed, never fails.
Comments