Happy Valentine’s Day!

No matter what your plans are for this day, whether or not you have a significant other to share the day with or if everything in you cringes at the thought of a day set apart to focus on love, one thing is true.  You are truly, deeply, madly loved.

The greatest love story of all happened before time began.  God fell in love with mankind from the moment of creation.  A passionate, senseless love for this creature that would turn its back on Him, ignore Him, run away from Him, betray Him, abandon Him, and ultimately hang Him on a cross to die.  God knew that we would do all of that and He chose to love us any way.  That is unconditional love.

He saw mankind and how lost we were.  No direction or purpose.  No hope for the future, let alone eternity.  Trapped in a broken world, separated from our Creator by the choices we made.  In desperate need of being rescued from ourselves and our self-involved lives.  We needed something to live for that was bigger than life as we knew it.  We needed to know that death was not the end of life.  We needed a savior…

And at just the right time, God did it.  He came to earth as a man.  Jesus.  We think of  that day as Christmas, but really it was the very first Valentine’s Day.  A package wrapped in swaddling clothes and sealed with the kiss of God Himself.  The gift that kept on giving and still gives today.  The gift of life.

It was that gift, Jesus, who healed our hearts by forgiving what we couldn’t undo.  He broke down the wall that stood between us and the One we were created to love.  He restored our relationship with God.  He gave us a purpose and meaning for living.  He gave us life.

When Jesus died on the cross, His heart was broken for us.  He literally felt every ounce of pain and hopelessness that mankind knew and took it with Him, to be nailed to a tree – ripping away its power over us.  When He was bound, we were freed.  When He was broken, we were healed.  When He died, we received our first breath of real life.

But death could not keep Him down, could not kill the love that went beyond time and space to reach us.  This would not be a tragic love story ending in death.  It would be love story with NO ending.  One of life that lasts forever in a boundless, irrational, amazing love.  When Jesus rose from the dead, mankind saw that anything was possible with God and that they would never again experience any other love that could ever come close.

I hope that you remember that this Valentine’s Day.  That deeper than any chocolates or flowers, there is a love that transcends all others.  You are truly, madly, deeply loved. Jesus wants you to be His valentine, forever and ever…

Ephesians 3:18 – And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.