Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. ⁸ The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. 

1 John 4:7-8

As a matter of principle, I have never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. I think what irked me – historically – about the celebration was the contrived nature of the expectations, and the sense that something I was experiencing as genuine and unique was being manipulated by everything crass, and false, and commercial.

So – early on in my relationship with Rebekah – I took a stand against the Valentines Industrial Complex.

My protest still involved giving Rebekah flowers, a card, or some other token, but on the 12th or 13th, or maybe the 15th. My affections – I reasoned – were not about to be dictated to by the greetings card industry or popular culture!

Bad Idea!

I soon learned, however, that my opinion didn’t really matter that much! Avoiding Valentine’s Day and letting February 14 go by without a token of some sort was not an effective strategy. My plan backfired in a serious way!

So today, older (much older) and wiser (a little), I actually enjoy participating in the schmaltz and the gratuitous gift-giving. Valentine’s Day is one more reason to celebrate our beautiful life together – what could be wrong with that?

This year I started with the single red rose, evocative of Rebekah’s fateful birthday in 1977, when my father-in-law to be stepped in and gave me a hand! (read “A Timeless Birthday Story“).

I followed up with a more extensive and beautiful arrangement at breakfast. Plus we exchanged really good cards (not easy to find).

For me, the whole point of a day like Valentine’s is to remember that, in a world where division and hate and bitterness and acrimony dominate the day-to-day news, love is a more powerful, more enduring, more human force.

And so, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” – DEREK