No Greater Love



After observing 25 Valentine's Days, I've concluded that on February 14th, four (basic) types of people that exist:

- The haters
- The hopefully optimistic
- The lovers
- And those who have loved and lost

The haters want nothing to do with Feb. 14th and blame the advertising people for creating such a mean holiday which either reminds them of the love they've yet to find or the love they experienced once but were cheated away from.

The hopefully optimistic realize that although they might not be considered as someone else's romantic love right now, one day they might be.

The lovers have found their Valentine and enjoy the simplest of Valentine's Day exchanges.

And there are those who have tasted love in it's truest and purest earthly form, but death now separates them from that person.

I'd argue that love is easily one of the most powerful driving forces on earth. 

Love will change you. Love will comfort you. Love will empower you. Love will make you do crazy things. Love is blind, but it also gives you the ability to see through even the roughest exteriors. Love takes your breath away, and other times it hurts like a knife right through your heart.

Love is dynamic and simple. 

To quote the Wedding Planner, "Love is just love." 

You can love a friend, you can love romantically, you can love an inanimate object like a home or a country, or you can love doing something like a sport or your job. 

But no matter what kind of love you have for anything or anyone, there is one kind of love that surpasses all of the rest of them. It's greater than romantic love, friendship, and enjoyment... 

It's sacrificial love... It's the kind of love a person has that compels them to give up their life for another person. 

David and I currently live in a military city, and I hope I never get used to seeing the Air Force and Army uniforms around town. Those men and women and their families, they exhibit sacrificial love for me every day, and they don't even know me. Honestly, I don't deserve that kind of love from them... 

On a day like Valentine's Day, isn't it humbling when you let yourself remember and recognize the kind of love we do receive every day from complete strangers? (It looks like you're not "unloved" after all.)

Furthermore, every second of my life, I am a recipient of Christ's sacrificial love which allows me to be in relationship with my Maker and will give me comfort should I find myself in the 4th category above. 

This love I choose to receive, and it identifies me to the world. 

It isn't how many Valentine's Day cards you get, if any, or the date tonight, or lack of... It isn't the adoration from others or the isolation you feel... It isn't the divorce papers or the wedding ring that screams to the world whether or not you're loved. 

It's the scars in His hands, the old rugged cross, and the sun coming up morning after morning giving you another day and thus another opportunity to choose to receive the greatest form of love we could ever experience. 

"There is NO GREATER LOVE than to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13

"For God SO LOVED the WORLD that HE GAVE His ONLY Son, so that EVERYONE who BELIEVES will not perish but have ETERNAL life." John 3:16

Happy Valentine's Day. May your day be more than chocolates, pink and red, and little heart shaped everything- May it be filled with experiencing the greatest form of love that has and ever will exist. 

In Him,
Lindsay

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