Valentine's day is next Thursday, and people were putting up decorations at work yesterday. For a minute, I got that "I'm all alone" ache, and then I started to think.
What does Valentine's Day mean, really? When you're little, it's the day you give valentines to all your friends at school, and they give you some back, and if you're lucky, you'll get one from the cute boy across the room, and you won't get one from the ugly slob who sits right in front of you. But it's all feelings.
Then you grow up some, and get a boyfriend, and Valentine's Day becomes a day that he gets you flowers, takes you to a REALLY nice restaurant, not the middle-of-the-line nice ones you usually go to, and he tells you he'll love you forever, he'll only ever love you, and all that mushy stuff. And then after awhile, you break up and move on. So much for loving each other forever. It was still just feelings.
Maybe when you get married, it's a little different. Every year, Dad gets flowers for Mom, and they go out. But then, he does both a lot anyhow, so maybe it's not that different. And yet, around half of all marriages end in divorce. So much for loving each other for ever. They even promised, and it still fell through. Even promises can't keep feelings around.
Why do we celebrate such a pointless holiday?
I think there are several reasons. The first is that we all want to be loved. We all want to feel like we are someone special, and we all want the closeness, the secureness (I'm doing a really bad job of coming up with a word for it, but I hope you know what I mean) that being loved brings. So we make a holiday so we can feel especially loved.
Second, we all aspire to love each other forever. Because we're all human, we grate on each other sometimes, often to the point where we decide it's too hard to try to get along. But, especially in the beginning, you really do want to love each other forever. So we make a holiday to symbolize what we are reaching for. But often, we still can't do it.
So why bother? What good does it do to commemorate a feeling, especially if we can't keep the feeling around?
I think Valentine's Day is supposed to point us to something--or someone. When we were at our most unlovable, someone still loved us, loved us to the point that he was willing to die for us. Feelings are notoriously fickle. No one would die for their feelings, so this love can't have been just feelings. He was willing to die for us to save us from ourselves.
It's this love, not feelings, but a deep love that overrides the feelings of the time that must exist if any relationship is going to work. It's this love that we commemorate on Valentine's Day. It's this love that we try for, even though we can't get it because we're human. It's only through the One Who died for us that we can ever hope to achieve that kind of love.
Maybe when Dad goes out with Mom and brings her flowers, he's just trying to make it Valentine's day all year. Maybe that's not a bad idea.
"The world points to paper hearts and romantic movies, and says "this is love." God takes us to the foot of a cross and whispers "THIS is love." -a paraphrase of a quote that I have no idea who originally said.
pointe4Jesus
~Dancing for Him Who died for me.~
