♥ is universal

Just want to share a lovely story on this wonderful Valentine's Day. Enjoying myself read this article make me feel the true love.

On Valentine's Day and the Meaning of Love 
by Bob Lively

In less than two days, millions of us will line up at the counters of American commerce as we fork over billions of dollars doing our best to express the culture's always-superficial version of love through the purchase of long-stemmed red roses, chocolates, romantic cards and even diamonds.

Every time February rolls around, I find myself wondering about the motives underlying Valentine's Day.

Do we act out of the fear of hurting someone's feelings, or being viewed as a complete boor, if we don't purchase at least a card? Or do we succumb to the cultural powers summoning us to a mindless conformity because we're afraid to stand out from the crowd?

I learned to dread this day when I was in grade school because it required me to give cards bearing silly messages to everyone in my homeroom class, even girls. When I protested the custom, around the time I was in the third grade, my wise mother convinced me that I could tell my friends I loved them without really meaning anything serious.

Following that bit of reassurance, I remember questioning why we even went through the motion of purchasing so many little Valentines at our local dime store and then scribbling our friends' names upon the envelopes before dropping them in a big red Valentine's box placed conspicuously in the very front of our classroom to remind us not to forget what we were told was a most important day.

My mother's words reassured me until my older brother chimed in with the claim that I would have to wed any girl I professed to love. The thought so terrified me I couldn't sleep the night before Valentine's Day in my eighth year of life. Some children can't sleep on the night before Christmas, but I'm the only one I know who spent hours tossing and turning on Valentine's Eve.

As an old man, I've managed to debunk most of the ridiculous mythology my gifted brother heaped upon me when we were boys, but still I confess to wondering no small amount about how much we human beings know about love.

As best I know, no one has ever cobbled together an even close-to-adequate definition of love. St. John of the New Testament came close when he penned his timeless observation that "God is love." Yet even this seemingly simple, at-first-glance observation is not a definition so much as it is a proclamation of one man's beautiful faith.

All genuine love comes directly from God and therefore does not originate with us, but rather only comes through us as a heaven-sent force for good. Because love originates with God, love then is invariably mysterious and at the same time most powerful.

Love is not a product of the glands but is rather a matter of the heart that insists upon being a genuine expression of its source and is, therefore, what the Apostle Paul said of it — it is invariably patient, notoriously kind and never insistent upon its own way. Love, then, is not a feeling or an emotion but is rather a courageous decision for one to offer to another human being the gift of freedom. For when we truly love someone, that person is always free to stay or go, and free to become exactly who God has created him or her to become.

I wonder how many of us will be pondering the great powers inherent in patience, kindness and freedom as we line up at the store counters next week to purchase flowers and candy all in the name of love. I hope that a great many of us will, because this old troubled world desperately needs people who know well what it means to express love the other 364 days of the year.

Bob Lively serves on the adjunct faculty of Seton Cove Spirituality Center and is a teacher in residence at First Presbyterian Church and a guest lecturer at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.