I LOVE love – I think it’s the best thing that happens on the planet. It’s the biggest dream inside me.
But I admit that I have bought the lie that says I am not alive if I’m not in love. I bought the lie that says if I am not in love, then I am as good as dead — like my worth and value are set because of whether or not someone loves me.
Bono says his songs come from a God-shaped hole inside of him. This is a man that has a lot of things. But in spite of all of those things, he says he still has this hole and he says that it’s the reason that he sings.
To make a person synonymous with God is a ton of power to hand someone. Especially when they’re just a person. A person with questions and flaws and pain of their own. A human who doesn't have the power to fill that hole.
This creates a war, inside of me and maybe my heart is the opposite of small. Maybe it’s the opposite of cheap and empty and alone. Maybe it’s sacred and enormous and wild. Since we have the unfortunate disadvantage of being fallen humans, we are the last ones who should be able to define love. We have broken what love was intended to be.
The truth is that we’re all living love stories.
My friends may see no reason for me to happily celebrate a holiday so focused on romantic love, but when I am surrounded by agape love — by my heavenly Father, family and friends — I cannot see how I could ever not. I am confounded at their disbelief in the day. Why, as Christians, would we not want to celebrate a day full of expressions of love?
We all have our hurts, and we all have our demons. Even those in happy relationships aren't left untouched by love lost in this broken world. Paul wrote to the people of Corinth saying. "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." As Christians, in a world of selfishness, loneliness and false hopes of redemption in the arms of another mere human, we are the letter from God; we are writing the love of Christ on human hearts. Let's respond to the calling; let's love in the way we are called to, with whoever we are and however we can. That is vast.
The good news is, whether or not you are alone this Feb. 14, each and every one of us is already part of a romantic story — a story we can, in turn, invite others into. God has been romancing us with every sunset, every blossoming flower, every crashing wave and every star in the sky since the moment we entered this world.
God knows the desires of our hearts better than anyone. Like a lover, He wants us all to Himself. He offered His Son because He loved us, and this sacrificial love made the love we so desire possible. It provided an example and an incentive to love, romance and sacrifice ourselves for others — friends and enemies, spouses and significant others, strangers and family, rich and poor, near and far. We love because He first loved us.
