This may be an odd segue to Valentine’s Day, but let me ask you: how many Christmas cards do you receive in the mail any more? I can recall growing up seeing a wall in our house covered with them in my childhood, each and every year. And we had continued that process for most of our 22 years of marriage. But over the last ten years, the number we receive has fallen off, substantially. We received just three or four this past Christmas. I wonder why. Is it because we are too busy? Or maybe a hostile e-card and email takeover, or supplanted by Facebook posts and other social media, or it could be the pandemic information overload…perhaps just an outdated tradition?
I’m not throwing rocks at anyone, as we don’t send them anymore, either. The specialness of getting that Christmas card just lost significance, for whatever reason. I think it just became so mechanical, so expected, so routine.
So my wife Beth switched gears a few years ago, sending the family photo cards out, not for Christmas, but for Valentine’s Day, with a verse speaking true love. A message of love as it should be–God’s love, and our love for each other through God’s lens.
It is interesting to see what we do with Valentine’s Day. Flowers, candies, gifts, cards–and now lingerie (hey, we Americans always know how to market sex)–and all for a premium price. But I guess it’s the age-old question we ponder as Christians: how can we love each other when we don’t know how to love ourselves, when we aren’t willing to receive God’s love first. Forrest Gump may have said he knows what love is, but this world so often doesn’t.
So here’s the paydirt. Directly or indirectly, every member of the staff at CFC touches lives where the definition of love is unknown or warped or misunderstood. And the pain of that reality is present (whether seen or not). But let me ask you: how about your own pain? How do you see yourselves, in God’s eyes? Are you “lovely”? We can accept that, inasmuch as see ourselves as the Church. But do you see your “self” in that manner?
How you answer that question affects everything.
I don’t think I struggle with how God sees me–anymore. I’ve read too much Brennan Manning and Philip Yancey to not get it. But how I reflect that love is so often a different story. How often I look at others and see them through my own warped definitions of “love” and “worth,” my flowers and chocolates version of Love, instead of through God’s lens. And I miss the whole point.
Abba, please open our eyes to what genuine love is, in every opportunity and for the person right in front of us–and show us how to both receive and convey that love. My prayer for us is that our love will bear not only the cross of Christ, but the empty tomb, as well–whether we are looking in the mirror, at that family member, a coworker, or the newest foster kid in the system. Amen.
-Greg