Cards. Flowers. Chocolates. Poems. Love marketed, left and right. Love highly priced. Some try to buy it. Others try to ignore it. Still others mock it. Some detest it. Others adore it. And here we are, on this day, overwhelmed with and by three tiny but oh –so-powerful words: I Love You.
I Love You. Declarations and statements on posted notes, cards, e-mails and statuses. The same three words fill some people and empty others. These words empower some and weaken others. Love. It comforts some and disgusts others. Some claim that they found it, others hide it.
There is a spectrum of worldviews on what love really means. And yet some are left to still wonder. The throngs of secular poems and songs, works of literature and examples of media could not exhaust its definitions. No consensus has been reached for centuries on this untamed love. There is a clear uncertainty about it. Foreigner’s 1984 secular song “I want to know what love is, I want you to show me” (emphasis mine) is a plea for an answer. I want to know what love is defines the crises of centuries only to get an even more critical answer: you. The singer begs for yet another earthly mortal to author some sort of coherent definition of love. The uncertainty and the relativism of the answer could only throw more coal on the already burning fire of the unknown. It is but a vanity that keeps on perpetuating itself. You. Love. Me. Until when? How? Why? Maybe cards, flowers, chocolates, songs, poems will explain love. Maybe not. Maybe the smooth way of you romancing me is the definition of love. And maybe not.
This uncertainty is not permitted to Christians for the Bible has already answered it. 1 John 3:16: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (NIV, emphasis mine). Love is the self-sacrificial act of God’s Son for the forgiveness of sins. The singer overlooked John’s answer. To his I want to know what love is John answers this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. Love starts with Christ, not with you and me. Love is authored by the blood of Christ on the cross. God is Love (1 John 4:8). Love is blood and grace, selflessness and vinegar, prayers and sweat. It is not a commercialized flower, perfume, candy or card. In other words, John says: Do you want to know on this day what love really means? Look at the bloody cross stained for your salvation.
John wrote what love is for me, first and foremost. As a Christian woman in today’s world, I can’t help but long for chocolates, flowers, cards, me-attention, more than putting others first. I draw an invisible circle around me and proclaim myself the queen of the day. After all, the media, the papers, the radio, and even the stores and coupons tell me I deserve so. And most times, the expectations I have fade into disillusionment and bitterness, complaint or unhappiness.
As Christian women, we live this Valentine’s day not conformed to the uncertainty and the vanity of the secular definition of love, but with a renewed mind, we allow the Gospel to transform our misunderstandings of what love really is (Romans 12:2,9). It is idolatrous to let my husband, or my culture, and not the scripture, define love for me. Christ’s love cannot and should not be replaced by any other definition of love. That is why I choose to cling to Christ love. John’s words are a plea for Christian women to reflect Christ’s love to their husbands, children, and friends. A great opportunity for us, women, to stop expecting and start expressing the love we carry for our husbands. The day, each day, is not about flowers, chocolates, cards he gives me, or not, no matter how beautiful they may be. Today is not even about me. Everyday is about Christ and the church. Because I love Christ and my husband, I will do the laundry, clean the house, build my husband up and love him to pieces!
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