“Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)

February 4 has always been an auspicious date. For example:

• It’s the day in 1783 that Britain “cried uncle,” and declared the official cessation of hostilities in the War of Independence.
• Feb 4, 1789, George Washington got the presidential nod from the first Electoral College.
• In 1913, Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee.
• In 1945, this is the day Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta to plan the future of the new Europe.
• In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a new networking website to keep college friends connected; he called it “facebook.”
• On this day in 1977, Fleetwood Mac released “Rumors,” an album destined to become both the soundtrack of my college experience and one of the greatest rock classics of all time.
• Finally, and even more significantly, February 4, 1977 was also the day Rebekah and I went out on our first date, initiating a relationship destined to become both the heartbeat of my college experience and the greatest love-story classic of all time.

CELEBRATION! Rebekah and I celebrated yesterday evening by dining at Shuckers, a Wake Forest seafood venue that I’d laud with stellar reviews if I were penning a food blog. Then we went to the hardware store! Believe me, for Rebekah, that’s pretty much the perfect date.

This morning I simply plan to reference our 37-year dating history as a point of encouragement for everyone who is serious about making a long-term relationship work.

It’s no surprise to me that our devotional reading for today had us turn to the following passage in 1 John 4:7-12.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

LOVE: Both Rebekah and I interpret our lives in terms of our status as God’s children, disciples of Jesus committed to living into all that a relationship with our Creator makes possible.

One way to live as such beings of light and life, John suggests, is to allow the God quality of love to live in us and to define our relationships with one another.

So I’ll close today by saying this – and most especially to the men I know who talk such big “God-talk” yet who refuse to practice the discipline of self-giving love when it comes to their wives – “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

37-years into this relationship (and it’s always a work in progress), I remain committed to the principles Christ lived, and that John then outlined so beautifully in his letters.

In love, and because of love – DEREK