Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching.  I love Valentine’s Day…our family spends the weeks before Valentine’s Day making cards for each other.  I love the excitement, the creativity, the thoughtfulness…I love the Love that goes into each homemade Valentine.  They aren’t Masterpieces…they are imperfectly cut pieces of paper with imperfectly written letters and imperfectly written messages…but the Love is there…and on Valentine’s Day that is the only thing that matters.

This year, as I was making Valentines, I thought about what kind of Valentine I wanted to make my mother, my sister, my sister-in-laws, and my mother-in-law…and then my heart broke.  This Valentine’s Day will be the first one that my mother-in-law spends without her Valentine by her side…my father-in-law passed away last June.

I can’t describe with words the total and complete heaviness and emptiness that consumed my heart when I tried to make a Valentine for her.  I headed to the store to buy one.  I think I read every card in the store…and the tears just came.  I left the store and headed home.

I tried hard to think of what I could give my mother-in-law to fill the emptiness that will inevitably hit her this Valentine’s day…flowers…sweets…a pedicure.  I thought of a great many things that I could send her…but truly…the emptiness will be there…even with all of those things.  So I prayed for her…and then it hit me…it won’t the most beautiful bouquet of flowers or the most expensive box of sweets or the most relaxing pedicure that will matter this Valentine’s Day….it won’t be the imperfectly cut pieces of paper with imperfectly written letters and imperfectly written messages that will matter this Valentine’s Day…it will be the Love that matters…will Mom know how much she is thought of and loved…and then I sat down and made her Valentine.

As I cut and glued and wrote, a thought occurred to me…my mother-in-law will not be the only person hurting this Valentine’s Day.  In a world where people fill their lives with “things” to fill the many voids they feel, there will be a great many people hurting this Valentine’s Day…there will be a great many people in need of real Love this Valentine’s Day.  Some we may know…relatives…friends….some we may not know…strangers walking their dogs…strangers shopping along side of us.  Some we may hold grudges against for past wrongs done against us…

The Greatest Love I know is Jesus.  His Love is what changed my life and saved me from my sin…my anger…my bitterness…my hurt.  It is His Perfect Love that spoke while He hung on the cross dying…”Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)  It is only His Perfect Love that can speak and fill the voids this Valentine’s Day.

My prayer this Valentine’s Day is that we Christians would draw ourselves so close to God in prayer that we would be filled to overflowing with the Love of God…so much so that that Love of God would spill out onto our relatives…friends…strangers walking their dogs…strangers shopping along side of us…so much so that that Love of God would move us to forgive and show Love to those we may hold grudges against…

The Love of God is the only True and Perfect Love…it is the only Love that can fill the voids in hearts this Valentine’s Day.  If you are reading this and you want to experience this Love of God, you can go here to say a Sinner’s Prayer and enter into that Loving relationship with God…or you can go here to speak with someone from our church.

Happy Valentine’s Day…