Where is the Love?

Ahh, Valentine's Day - a day to celebrate soppy, over the top, mushy, romantic love. A day where everything is washed in a delightful shade of pink, where hearts and flowers can be seen in every supermarket, card shop and pound shop in the country, A day where everyone is trying to get me to buy expensive gifts for my loved one.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the chance to buy my wife a present, to demonstrate that I love her and to make her feel just a little bit special... although I'm probably not being a very good husband if it takes a special day each year for the last two of those, and despite what Amazon may suggest, a Kindle is a pretty huge Valentine's Day present....  But is that really what love is all about. In a world where you can buy a facebook girlfriend for £5 a week, have we collectively lost the plot when it comes to love?

I don't know if part of the problems is that we don't really know what we mean when we talk about love. We focus on romantic love, but we do so in a shallow manner -- we talk about falling into love and falling out of love, as if its something that happens to us, outside our own control - as if our personal feelings are the most important thing in the world.

But the world seems to be realising that this isn't all there is to love. Real love, as demonstrated in Jesus' life is an action of choice. We choose to love our friends, our family, our neighbours, even our enemies. We may not always agree with them, we may not always like the things they do, or even the people they are. But we can and should chose to love them nonetheless - that is the commandment, and the example of Jesus, who demonstrated his love in the ultimate manner - by dying on a cross. Perhaps in that context, Amazon's suggestion to buy my loved one a Kindle might seem like a cheap alternative after all!

Of course, probably the greatest passage about love is that found in 1 Corinthians 13... and particularly verses 4 - 8a. It is probably the most common passage read at weddings - certainly most weddings I've been to. And yet, when you read it with 1 Corinthians 12, and 1 Corinthians 14, and indeed most of the rest of the book, it becomes clear that its not really about romantic love, about the husband/wife relationship - or rather, that that is only one type of relationship it refers to - actually, its about living in community, about being the worshipping people of God together that matters - and love, choosing to love one another, and to love those outside the community, that is the glue which holds the community together and allows them to be the visible image of their saviour in the world today.

{And for those wondering, I know the Black Eyed Peas used this title for one of their songs, but U2 also used the lyric in "Love and Peace or Else" on the Album "How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb"... so I haven't broken my own rule, honest!}