Greetings …

On Sunday we celebrate Valentine’s Day … a day when we sometimes see shops decked out in red hearts and retailers encouraging us to spend on flowers, chocolates, jewellery, cards or a meal to share with that special someone.  Valentine’s Day seems to be less about love and more about commercial enterprise.

Love is a major theme of the Bible.  We are reminded that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16) and that “faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13).  Peter also tells us that we are to “love one another deeply from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22)

As English speakers we think of emotions as being centred in the heart, but speakers of New Testament Greek did not.  For them the heart was the seat of thinking, willing, choosing and feeling.  So when Peter says “love each other from the heart” it isn’t all about emotion and romance.  According to Peter, love is a matter of the heart because it is something that we choose to do; it is something that is motivated by conviction as much as emotion.  Love is something that flows from commitment and conscience, it is something which perseveres in good times and in bad, it is self-giving and wants what is best for the other.

So this Valentine’s Day let us think about what real love is about.  Let us choose to love because we know it is right and the world needs it.  Let us choose to love because “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God” (1 John 4:16). 

Let us remember that that “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Love and blessings – Heather.