Love is in the air...

As Valentine’s Day has just passed, it got me thinking about love. At this time of year, you seemed to be surrounded by love hearts, roses and cheesy poetry… and it gets a bit sickening. Well, that could just be me being bitter, but I think love should be celebrated all year round, rather than a day being set aside as an excuse to tell someone how you feel about them. At home, Valentine’s Day is a pretty big deal. My mum goes to ‘Marks and Spencer’s’ (which only happens on special occasions) and checks out the Valentine’s day deals; my step dad writes cards for me and my sisters from “our secret admirer” even though at eighteen, you would have thought I had worked it out by now; and my younger sisters come home from school with stacks of cards from various boys. I guess it is quite exciting to know that someone thinks you’re special, but why not be made to feel like that all the time? There are so many verses in the Bible telling us how much God loves us…
“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands” – Deuteronomy 7: 9.
How awesome is that!? God promises us his love to a thousand generations and all he expects in return is to “keep his commands”. And even if we do mess up, he is still going to love us anyway! Proverbs 10: 12 says “love covers all wrongs” and I think this is so powerful, to know that no matter what we have done, God is going to love us just as much, and he will do all he can to get us back on the right path. He also teaches us to love each other, as the second commandment found in Matthew 22: 39 is “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’.” It doesn’t specify as particular day on which we have to show each other that we love one another, we should do it all the time!
So today, and every day, think about the people that surround you. Think about how special they are to you, and tell them! God loves us and gave up everything he loves so that we could live and love each other.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3: 16.

Charli Wood