The card sections in stores blaze with red. Ads for chocolates and flowers abound. You can even get chocolate diamonds! Love is in the air! (Well, it’s more like marketing is in the air!)
The bent-over elderly couple I saw holding hands as they prayed over their food in a restaurant provides a much better picture of love. The scene spoke of love that bore the fruit of commitment and devotion and humility before God.
But even this tender scene cannot bring us anywhere close to comprehending the greatest love of all. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 KJV). The Treasury of Daily Prayer (CPH 2008, p. 1195) recently quoted Hilary of Poetiers (c. 300–368) on the magnitude of this love. “Gifts of price are the evidence of affection, the greatness of the surrender of the greatness of the love.” And again, “Herein is the proof of His love and affection, that He gave His own, His Only-begotten Son.”
God’s “only begotten” love is an incomprehensible love and yet, through faith, God enables us “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). To know the love that surpasses knowledge is to know the enormity of the price paid for the redemption of all humanity. To know the enormity of this price is to know the inestimable value it gives to all humanity. To know this inestimable value is to know the urgent importance of affirming and defending that divinely given value in every human life.
Defending and affirming life is much more than a moral imperative that flows from human love. It is a divine imperative that flows from God’s “only begotten” love. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
So, send a valentine to your sweetheart, but also send one to your local pregnancy center, maternity home, Christian adoption service, hospice volunteer, LFL state or chapter leader, or anyone you know who shares God’s “only begotten” love by affirming, valuing, and loving the “least of these.”
February 10, 2011