02-14-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
February 14, 2024
It is Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday, Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day. So, which one comes first? Which one is more important? Without judgment, I would say there is a lot impacting how a person answers the question, and there is something important about both. In fact, one is about celebrating love, and the other is about doing the hard work of exploring what inside of us is keeping us from doing a better job of loving like Jesus. Yes, one is usually associated with romantic love, but anyone who has been in a relationship for years knows very well that remaining in a healthy and life-giving relationship requires less romance than we might have thought at the beginning and a whole lot more hard work of setting aside ego, embracing humility, and understanding what it means to be vulnerable with another human being. So maybe this overlap is not entirely a problem. In 1 Corinthians 13, we find those words often spoken at a wedding:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Of course, the Apostle Paul wasn’t thinking about marriage when he wrote those words, but about how those seeking to follow Jesus are to live in the world and what love is to look like in every moment, romantic or not. Of course, the better job we do of living up to this high standard of love with those closest to us, the better we will learn how to do so with every person we meet in life.

God of love, help us to strive toward a greater understanding of love on this day and each day to follow. Amen.