Valentine’s Day: A reminder that God's love is unending

Recruiting Sergeant Brian Colley sends a Valentine’s Day message to us all.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, an opportunity for many to express their love for sweethearts or someone they would like to be their sweetheart. It was certainly a day of rejoicing for card shop owners and suppliers, with an estimated 1 billion cards sent worldwide.

St Valentine was a priest living in Rome during the third century. He died around AD 270 on 14 February. Legend has it that Valentine himself wrote a love letter on the eve of his execution – he had been imprisoned for conducting the weddings of soldiers and sent a message to his jailer’s daughter, with whom he had fallen in love. The sending of Valentine cards seems to have become popular in this country in 1840, when the Penny Black postage stamp was introduced and enabled ordinary folk to use the postal service.

People like to be told they are loved and to feel loved. Valentine’s Day love is often light, romantic, sloppy or sentimental, expressed in exactly those ways, sometimes to people who are never going to return the same feelings.

Human love can be shallow or deep. It can be fleeting or lasting. But God’s love is forever deep and permanent. Paul writes: ‘And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge’ (Ephesians 3:17–21).

Paul’s well-known description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is certainly not sloppy or sentimental. It refers to a love that shows concern for others, the sort of love exemplified by Jesus. CH Dodd, the Christian writer, says this description is ‘a portrait for which Christ himself sat’. There are many sayings about what love is, but Paul’s description also tells us what human love is not.

God’s love is full of grace and mercy, ‘grace’ meaning undeserved love given to all. When a child says ‘I love you’, it usually brings forth the automatic response ‘I love you too’. That is the response from our heavenly Father when we say we love him. Well-known words sung today tell us that ‘love changes everything’. God’s love certainly does. It is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice – Jesus proved that. Are we prepared to match his love?

God’s love never fails. George Matheson was aware of that when, after being let down by human love, he wrote ‘O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go’ (SASB 616). God’s love remains the same, as the hymn ‘Love Stands the Test’ reminds us: ‘Love has a language, all its own making… Love stands the test,/ Love gives its best,/ Love planned our life’s course, designedly best;/ Love won in the garden,/ Love climbed the green hill;/ Love will live on, for love stands the test.’ Love can be declared on Valentine’s Day once a year. Our love for God – and God’s love for us – can be declared every day, all year round.

Reflect and respond

• Make Laurie Klein’s song (SASB 369) your Valentine message for today and every day: ‘I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice/ To worship you… Take joy, my King, in what you hear,/ May it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.’
• Psalm 89:1 says: ‘I will sing of the Lord’s great love for ever.’ How often do you declare your love for God?
• Read 1 Corinthians 13:4–8. How many of Paul’s words can be used to describe your love for others?