Another Change of Seasons
I don’t like Valentine's Day. I liked it when I was a kid, and we made mail boxes out of shoe boxes at school, and we got candy or gum in our Valentine’s. But now it’s too much pressure. I have to get the flowers and it’s so hard to find the right card or make a card from scratch or write some poetry and what about going out for dinner and then there are all the commercials about saying “I love you” with a diamond or two.
It’s all so overwhelming and demanding and commercialized. I want to be able to say “I love you” in my own way in my own time and not because I have to in a particular way and on a particular day. But then would I ever get around to it? Would I ever do something special to tell my wife I love her?
It’s so easy to take love for granted or to take a person for granted. Maybe I need the probing of a special day to be motivated to demonstrate my love for my wife. Maybe I should be a better planner and not wait until the last minute to look for a card or go to the florist.
None of this matters, because, in the end, Valentine’s Day will come and there will be flowers and we will go out to dinner and I will settle on some card. I doubt there will be diamonds. But there will be love. Love will be proclaimed, given and received, and there will be thanksgiving for someone to love and someone who loves me.
Sometimes church can be too much like Valentine’s Day. Having to worship God in a particular way on a particular day may seem like too much trouble or too much pressure. It’s so much easier to stay in bed and so much more fun to go fishing.
But, if we didn’t have a day for worship, would we ever worship at all? If we didn’t have this day for worship, would we take God for granted or maybe forget him altogether?
The truth is, we don’t worship for God’s sake. We worship because it is a deep human need to worship the God who created us and because we so desperately need to hear over and over again that our God loves us and that he took the time and the trouble to prove it to us in the death of our Lord on the cross. If God so loves us, it seems only right that we love Him back and show it.
Your Servant in Christ,
~Pastor Tom Olson