Here in the U.S. it’s Valentine’s Day, a special time to dose your sweethearts and mates with some extra loving.  But Valentines love can also be shared with your family & friends.  Don’t forget roses! & chocolates! (always top of the list for Virginia, your Roses in the Rubble blogger.)  Since this year Valentines falls on SUNDAY, even though it’s Lent chocolate treats are back on the menu (just for today.)  YAAAY!

One year back in my 20’s (when dateless Valentine’s days mattered) I decided to proactively flip singleton pitypartyitis  & focus on LOVE, because it comes in all shapes & sizes, not just the romantic kind.  After printing out  I Corinthians 13 on bright pink paper I sent it with Valentines cards out to all my family & friends.  Just to say, ‘hey, i love you!  … and BTW, thanks for all the love you have shared with ME!’

“If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are “tongues” the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete.

When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me.

At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

In this life we have three great lasting qualities—faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.”   (I Corinthians 13, J B Phillips Translation)

At the end of the day, what matters is how we love.

grace, peace & Happy Valentine’s Day

Virginia : )

Dear Jesus, please fill us with Your love anew, that we may be Your love anew this day.