SUPER-CHARGED VALENTINE FROM THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE

In the commercial world, if there is a season of love - it is certainly right now, when many a heart is perched on the edge of excitement waiting for a remembrance from a special someone. My heart though, is feeling task-oriented. I am snowed in this week, going through baskets of piles and piles of baskets in my office. I keep finding greeting cards, that but for their kind and well-meaning sentiment I simply could not throw away. Many of them were funny sayings about growing older (I just entered my 50s), and the “keepers” are the precious ones from my husband who picks the perfect card every time and then adds his own lovely words. His words are so important to me, my wifely heart needs them, believes them and trusts them to be true.
I am a lover of words. I enjoy thinking about them. I use a lot of them for better or worse, possibly more than the purported 30,000 female used words per day (as opposed to the reported 15,000 words used by males). God, the originator of words, the author of the very first word, used the power of his Word to speak the world into being. Now that’s power!
God’s same breathtaking power of speaking into being is also brimming in what I would call Super Charged Valentines from the God of the Universe. He says to us, "I have loved you with an everlasting love (Jer.31:3) and “You are a love letter, written on our hearts from Christ to all who see you (2Cor. 2:2-3.) If that is not enough he promises he will make us shine like stars in the universe in contrast to a dark existence in a world of empty struggle (Phil.2:5.) Being loved, loving and shining like stars is incredible but how about having a divine Fragrance? God says that …in Christ we will always be led in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere (2 Cor. 2:14.)
I am an empty nester. My world was rocked when my children left for college. I have a career, I have a strong marriage and I have a support system. But the heart of my struggle when these two children left became, “Who am I really, and what did it all mean?” I have fought despair and loss on what at times felt like a grand scale. But God has shown me again and again that this present reality is not all there is and there IS the underscore. My longing for something to last forever is my longing for His everlasting love. I have questioned my value to my family and the Kingdom, as I looked for it in opinions of others and performance of my children. But God is telling me that I am a love letter that He is writing in and through me….allowing Him to do that, has been an arm-wrestling match not worth watching!
There is a new, albeit intermittent Peace in me that is growing. Shining like the stars and triumphally processing do seem to go nicely together and I can smile inwardly at recent moments of shining entrances both in word and deed that I know He was the orchestrator of, to His glory. The fragrance part is beautiful allusion to the very air we breathe in and breath out, filled with the Glory of God in us. Sort of the “There’s something different about you” kind of thing.
So friends, I have just “overjoyed myself” reading these phrases both bold in type and intent spoken through Scripture. The near heart-stopping picture God paints of the relationship He is all about with us, sings of permanency, transparency, obvious ownership, victory and it smells good too? I am thinking that standing overwhelmed and even stupefied at the vast selection of Valentine’s at our local card store is not where I will be found this holiday. I am encouraged once again by the boldness of God’s love for me and empowered to share that love with those he places in my life.
It’s what He does.
Susan