Dear God, Help me today to understand what love really means.
I need a love that’s big enough to include all of us. Big enough for the dating and engaged couples, of course, with their giddy daydreams of a future together. But also big enough for the married folks, whether their passion for each other is still blazing brightly or barely more than a smoldering wick. Big enough for the singles toasting their independence, and for the singles wishing someone would come along and make that independence disappear. For the lonely and widowed and brokenhearted, I need a love that understands, a love that welcomes in hurt and sorrow instead of excluding them.
The love I need more than anything is Your love. Without Your love, no other love will ever be sufficient. And with it, every other love becomes richer and truer and more life-giving than it could have been otherwise. We have learned all our best loves from You: the love of faithful friends, of spouses and significant others, of parents and siblings and children. Love that commits. Love that sacrifices. Love that lays down its life. You authored each of these loves, taught us how to recognize them and long for them and give them away. Our best efforts at Valentine’s Day are just a fraction of the wholeness of love.
Today, let everything I see remind me of Your love.Let today be a day for love. Real love. Big love. Your love. - Gregory Cole
Valentine's Day Prayer to the Lord
Dear Lord, on this day of love and affection, we come before you with grateful hearts. Thank you for the gift of love that you have bestowed upon us, both in our relationships with others and in our relationship with you. Help us to cherish and nurture the love we share with our partners, family, and friends, always seeking to reflect your love in our words and actions.
Lord, we lift up to you all those who are lonely or hurting on this day, asking that you would surround them with your comfort and peace. Help us to be instruments of your love, reaching out to those in need and sharing the love that you have poured into our hearts.
Finally, Lord, we thank you for the ultimate expression of your love—the sacrifice of your Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. May we always remember the depth of your love for us and live our lives in gratitude and obedience to you.
Amen.
