A little known fact about me is that my favorite holiday is Valentine’s Day. There were many years that I groaned about the time so focused on love but in the last fifteen or so years I have come to understand love from an other-worldly perspective and now I love the opportunity to share the Love of the Lover I know in a season focused on love.

Have you ever pondered why so many people get so depressed and disappointed on Valentine’s Day? On a worldly level it is a pretty big set-up and potential for failure. All of us create scenarios in our hearts of what a day about love should be like and feel like. Each and every person has an expectation echoing around inside of what it would be like to be singled out, adored, and loved completely for who we are, not what we can do. And where did that expectation come from? Why God, of course. When He was perfectly crafting His greatest creation He carved out a big ole space that was to be filled with His great passion and delight for us. He put in us a burning desire to be known completely and cherished as the apple of His eye. Satan was so jealous of that perfect union between God and Adam and Eve that he thwarted that great love with deception and temptation. Eve and Adam bit (literally) and for generation after generation since we have all felt a longing for something that is missing. We try to replace it with earthly love and in so doing find ourselves botching things up or at least somewhat disappointed because even the greatest earthly love cannot fill all of the space that God alone was meant to inhabit.

Don’t get me wrong. Earthly love between man and woman, friends, family, even pets, can be wonderful and quite glorious at times! The word intoxicating comes to mind but with that word always comes the eventual fact that we are insatiable for love and the intense glory of earthly love often fades and cools when other stresses and distractions and responsibilities and insecurities come along. All of our needs and fears and hopes and dreams get put under a magnifying glass on Valentine’s Day. “Will I go on a special date or will I be alone?” “Will I be made to feel special?” “How can I buy or do something to express my feelings I’m not even sure I fully understand?” “If I have the best day or night ever, what will I do on February 15th and 16th and 17th, and March 3, and August 17th? Who will fill that love vacuum in me then?” It’s a daunting and perplexing world we live in. God knows that. He has always known that. He made a perfect plan for each and every one of us. Oh, that we would walk into that plan and let Him love us the way that we need to be loved!

It isn’t really that complicated. What if today you let Him love you first. His love is not selfish and it isn’t based on your performance. It is. It is. It always has been and always will be. His love is the only love that will fill the space that He created in you. Can you imagine the freedom you would experience in this week of focused love (and every other week too) if God Himself filled up all of your doubts, insecurities, and longings with His love first?? If you are already full then any expression by your friends, children, siblings, spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, would be more than enough because you could experience human love from a place of abundance and not scarcity. That, my friends, is what freedom looks like…….to be loved so well and completely by a Holy God that we aren’t even looking for table scraps! True love here on earth of any sort should just point and hint to a Holy, God-love. He has so much more for us than we settle for! Would you rather find freedom and acceptance in love or neediness and the possibility of rejection in love? We have a choice every second of the day. I give and receive love down here so much better because I choose Him as my First Love always! See how simple and how we make it all so complicated and add so much angst about our love?

Let me share a few words with you from the Lover of your soul. The Song of Solomon/The Song of Songs presents us with such exquisite beauty in love. To many it seems too provocative to even be in the Bible and we often shy away from it because it has words in it like “lover” and “beloved” and “darling”. If we could move beyond our hang-ups with expressions of love we might be able to learn some things about what our relationship with Him could be like. Receive these words into your heart from the King, the Father, the One who knows you better than you know yourself, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.” (Song of Songs 2: 10-13) I don’t know about you, but as I receive that Valentine from the Creator of the Universe, my tank is full and now I can easily and without expectation receive any other love that is sent my way this week!

You have not been abandoned and you are not unloved. Every sunrise and moonrise, every drop of rain that falls and every flower that swells with the possibility of life is speaking to you if you will see it. You matter in His Kingdom. You are loved as no other. He is tender towards you and cares about every single thing you are going through. We celebrate that love this week. That is why Valentine’s day is my favorite. I have so much of that love that, like the extra baskets of loaves and fishes, I just want to give it away!

Let me finish with one more verse from Song of Songs. I want to simplify and purify down part of chapter 1, verse 4 (you can read the exact content on your own). In simple words this encapsulates the whole of the epic love story we were created for. These are my words and I hope and pray today that they are yours as well: “Draw me. I will run after you.” (swoon)