Valentine’s Day has a special significance for our family. Today is grandson Connor’s birthday, now nine-years-old. Some of you have seen the Seminary’s publicity photo of me walking hand-in-hand with my grandson. That’s Connor. He makes Valentine’s Day especially personal for us.
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5). People weren’t objects to Jesus, not to be used, not manipulated, not obstacles but people for whom He had feelings. He even showed His heart for His opponents. “He looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5). Immanuel, God with us, has personal feelings for people.
If church people don’t show love, then our witness is empty talk, hypocritical. Much happens in life that hardens believing hearts. The reason is simple, God is pure love to us but the sin still lingering in us rejects God’s loving way for our lives (1 John 4:8; 3:4). Hence we Christians easily default to hardness of heart, coarseness, manipulation, being impersonal. The only corrective is physical, getting the purity of God’s Word down into our being. “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart” (1 Peter 1:22).
The Roman poet Virgil wrote, “Love conquers all.” God’s love transforms hardening times into occasions of love. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).
Happy Valentine’s Day to all, and Happy Birthday Connor! “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
Comments