My own heart-shaped card

Today is the "Day of Love." In the states it can be celebrated with friends, family, or lovers--in Europe, it's more celebrated between the latter category. Before I went to bed last night, I wrote a little Valentine's Day note for each of my roommates and taped it to our front door (that's how we communicate in the morning to catch everyone's schedule). Inside each heart shaped card, I wrote one of my favorite Bible verses talking about love. And I got to thinking that "love" is a concept that is hard to define, yet needs to be the base of all things.

Later on today, when I was meeting with a friend, we were talking about the definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, but what interested me more was not verses 4-8 (the famous verses) but verses 1-3; "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love." (The Message).

I find that sometimes things can be done out of duty instead of love, done out of the thought-line that "this is how it's always been done" instead of acting in love. I am guilty of that. This Valentine's Day, God wrote these verses on my heart (shaped-card) and spoke to me the vanity of trying to do things on my own instead of acting and reacting from the source of love, and that is Himself. Regardless of any good intention--I will not "make it" without loving from the source. Oh and it feels good to drink from the source on this day of love. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!