A VALENTINE GIFT: How does “to love and be loved” work?

Well here we are again. It's the dead of winter. It'll be another five weeks or so before it's springtime. And here in Colorado it's been one of the colder ones, certainly since we've been here. But this is a warm week. This is the week when we celebrate Valentine's Day. We're not very far from Lovlin Colorado where people go and put their cards in the mail just to have them postmarked, Lovlin. But Valentine's Day goes way back. Valentine's Day also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine is celebrated annually on February 14th. The Feast of Saint Valentine, just a little historical snapshot here, was established by Pope Galatius or Galatius, the first in AD 496 to be celebrated on February 14th and honor the Christian martyr, Saint Valentine of Rome, who died on that date in AD 269. And it's interesting because this is the loving week, gotta be kind and all. But there are numerous martyrdom stories associated with various Valentine's, connected people named Valentine, connected to February 14th, including a written account of Saint Valentine of Rome's imprisonment for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians persecuted out of the Roman Empire. According to legend, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his judge. He wrote a letter signed your Valentine as a farewell before his execution. In Europe, Saint Valentine's keys are given to lovers as a romantic symbol and invitation to unlock the giver's heart. Anyway, that's sort of the history. So when you buy that card, remember some Borg I died in prison in Rome, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. When I think of first love, I think of a mother, a mom, a mother's face generally is the first face a baby will see when a baby's born and they open their eyes, their sight as I've researched at least is about 2400 in each eye. It'll be, they'll be four years old before it's 2020 apparently. But the first weeks or so, they see eight to 12 inches out, which for a nursing child, the first face they will see would be their mothers. They don't see colors. They see black and white and gray. And in those first weeks and months, the color spectrum comes into play. I have a favorite author. His name is Rick Bragg. He's a southern boy. He was born in Alabama and he became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author in New York City. He wrote a wonderful book some years ago called all over, but the shouting Ruth and I like to read before we go to sleep. And whenever she says, boy, this person is a good writer, whatever the book is, she's reading. I'll either read that one or buy one to read because he's a great writer and he paints word pictures. And I'd like you to hear what he says about his mother because the book all over but the shouting is about his mother, essentially a single mom in a poverty-stricken area that cared for her children. And this is what he says. The first memory I have is of a tall blonde woman who drags a canvas cotton sack along an undulating roll of rust-colored ground through a field that seems to reach into the back 40 of forever. I remember the sound it makes as it slides between the chest-high stalks that are so deeply, darkly green, they look almost black and the smell of kicked up dust and sweat. The tall woman is wearing a man's bridges and a man's old straw hat. And now and then she looks back over her shoulder to smile at the three-year-old boy whose hair is almost as purely white as the bulls she picks who rides the back of the six-foot-long sack like a magic carpet. Then he goes on to say this, but it is the memory of that woman, that boy, and that vast field that continues to ride and ride in my mind, not only because it is a warm, safe, and proud thing I carry with me like a talisman into cold, dangerous, and spirit numbing places, but because it so perfectly sums up the way she carried us with such dignity. We would have survived on the fifty-dollar welfare check the government decided our lives were worth. The family could have lived on the charity of our kin and the kindness of strangers. Pride pushed her out into the cotton field in the same way that old terror, old pain squeezed my daddy into a prison of empty whiskey bottles. I asked her many years later if the strap of the sack cut deeper into her back and shoulders because I was there. You wasn't heavy, she said. Having a baby with her made the long row shorter somehow because when she felt like quitting, when she felt like her legs were going to buckle her back would break into. All she had to do was look behind her. It gave her a reason to keep pulling. There is something about love like that that is profound and it's visceral to us, especially when we're small and we receive it that way. Recently I was on these coasts out with a couple of friends Jim and Mary and I asked them when did you first experience love or who were the people in your growing up years that in that way left their fingerprints on your soul and this is what they said. Well media ones would be my parents. I have two different experiences with my parents because my mother tragically died when I was young. So if I look to the kind of examples that I could recognize of love it probably ends up pointing to my dad. There's more memories than my mom because of that. So when she died he kind of took over both father and mother. If I think of the examples that caused me to say this it was a provider and he was very dedicated to his family. Like I said he took on both the father and mother role and he spent time with me and with us and was always very accepting of everything we did. So provision, dedication, time and acceptance those are sort of pillars. And then I'd say example. An example. Yeah and I think you I've told you the story before of his example on education. He went to night school for 16 years there in his bachelor's degree. Wow. Wow. So that was definitely. That's cool. Exactly. Yes. Mary, who in your life? I think I've always known that God loves me. I was born knowing that God loves me. I've never questioned it. I've never doubted it. I've never wavered. So I always known I've been loved by God and my mother and father I knew I was loved. And my mother's had a rough upbringing and there was some people in her life that took care of her when she was young and we would go back and visit them and their love for her was very deep. And then because I'm her offspring their love for me was deep. So it was always very emotional. So you got going back. You got their love on the back stroke. Yeah. Because they were very accepting loving. Wow. Yeah. And then Jim's father was very toward you. His father was the most amazing person I've ever met because his dad made you feel like you were the only person on the planet if you just loved you. And then when he died we found out there were 400 people that felt the same way. They were the only ones. They were the special ones. Yeah. We all thought we were very special. So here we died. We found out that there was 400 felt the same way. So I'll come back to Jim and Mary in a moment but this this love thing is is a quality. It's it has feelings connected to it but it's way more than that. It's actions that take place. And here are some famous names with just their thoughts on love. I just throw these out. These are a gift to you for Valentine's Day. Maya Angelou said this. Love recognizes no barriers. Albert Einstein. You can't blame gravity for falling in love. Alfred Tennyson famous writer of a bygone era. If I had a flower for every time I thought of you I could walk through my garden forever. Jane Austen that writer of great novels of a bygone day. There is no charm equal to the tenderness of heart. Here's one from Charles Schultz. Charlie Brown peanuts. I love this but all you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. Here's a fellow named Alexander Milne who popularly known as A. A. Milne who is a well-known playwright in England. But then he wrote a story about a teddy bear and the teddy bear is more famous than he in terms of who knows the name. That teddy bear's name is Winnie the Pooh. This is what Winnie the Pooh says. Promise me you'll always remember your braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. This is both again. That's love language right there. Your braver than you believe stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. I like this one. Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave. Or if this I like this. If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. Two more and then I'm done with this section. It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long difficult words but rather short easy words like what about lunch? And finally if you live to be a hundred I want to live to be a hundred minus one day. So I never have to live without you. Back to Jim and Mary. I just thought I want to hear about their their relationship. I think they've been married. I think it's 39 years we'll hear here but here's what they said. When did you know that you love this guy? Mr. Jim over here. I don't know that there was a moment. I think I think I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I knew he was among the nicest people I'd ever met and after 39 years I probably love him more because I know the depth of him. 39 years. So far so good. Yeah really good. So I appreciate him more than I did when we first met. Isn't that an interesting word that we've loved each other all these years and I appreciate him more. This piece about appreciation and companionship and presence is like a growing thing isn't it over with you. When did you know that you liked that cute girl across the room or whatever? We were brought up in an independent church as we were met at Pennacostal church and I think the early times that matter was that I can remember now there was a they would do the vents down the basement the church was up and down and she was lying for the event and she was on the bottom stairs and I saw her and I knew this had a future. You know the the precision of that sounds like an engineer talking. Saw her on the bottom stairs when I knew I had a future. I think there's a country song in that. Great. So just as a as the broadest context for love or the ideas of love on this valentine day weekend just a couple of thoughts. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink, The Power of Thinking without thinking has an interesting note when it comes to relationships. He equates a relationship in part to Morse code back in the day of telegrapers where messages were sent with dots and dashes if you will. Everything from SOS to the train is coming. People would hit the key in a different rhythm a different way and that rhythm for every telegrapher became known as his or her fist. That's what they called it. That in essence was the signature of the telegrapher. His thought his comment is that every relationship that we have that's a quality relationship has its own fist. So whether it's you with a friend, you with a child, you with a parent, a brother, a sister, a spouse, whatever it has its own signature to it. Hearing that telegrapher's signature, listening closely had to be such a key and there's nothing that enhances loving more than listening. Well, it's very interesting because in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy, when the heart of Torah and the heart of following God is expressed, it uses that language. Jesus, here's later, quotes it when asked what the great commandment was. This is what he says in the Gospel of Mark. The most important one answered Jesus is this, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. That first part is called the Shema. It is quoted morning and evening by all observant Jews and in Hebrew it sounds like this. I don't have great Hebrew, but it sounds something like this. Shema, Israel, Adonai, Elochenu, Adonai, Echath. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. When you listen to that or hear that word, Shema, it means to hear and to hear is equivalent in most of the biblical scriptures with the word obey. It's like my mom saying to me when I didn't respond to something she asked, she'd say, Dick, did you hear me? Rather than saying that I was disobedient, she gave me the benefit of the doubt of having a hearing impediment. So the Shema talks about hearing, hearing God, or that we hear him clearly and therefore follow him. It's interesting because later on when Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and all your mind, sometimes we would take that all your heart and all your mind as sort of spirit and emotions. This is referenced, by the way, in a book by Loast, Fairburg, and Bruce Okhema, and it's called listening to the language of the Bible, hearing it through Jesus' ear. They have a very interesting comment on the word soul that fits here. Soul is a Hebrew word nefesh. Nefesh means life as well as soul. So the Jewish interpretation of love, the Lord with all your soul, is actually that we should love God with all of our lives every moment throughout our lives. There's something about being all in in loving that is unmatched. You see it in families. You see it oftentimes in sports teams and in the military in endeavors where people are virtually dependent on each other for their lives. You catch that feeling of all it. The authors of that book that I just referenced share a wonderful story to illustrate what all in really is. Rabbi Kiva, a greatly respected Jewish Rabbi, who lived in the first century AD, was tortured to death publicly by the Romans because he refused to give up teaching and studying the scriptures. It was the time of saying the morning Shema and during his torture, his students heard him reciting the Shema instead of crying out in pain. His students called out him teacher. Even now, the dying Rabbi said, all my life, I have wondered about the phrase that says, love the Lord your God with all your soul, wondering if I would ever have the privilege of doing this. Now that the chance has come to me, shall I not grasp it with joy? He repeated the first verse of the Shema. Hero Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone until his soul left him. What a powerful story. In closing, I just like to share the definition, not a definition, but a description of love that's found in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote in the mid-first century to the church at Corinth in Greece. Corinth sits in the south of Greece. It was a wild party town. In Athens, you drove Bentley's and Rolls Royces. In Corinth, you drove Ferraris and street rods. It was a town full of sailors and partying and all kinds of things. Probably a cross between something like San Diego with sailors and Fort Lauderdale of spring break. It was that kind of town. And in the middle of that town was this community of believers. And in the first letter to them, the Corinthians, Paul says this about love. 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, 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, what I do, I am bankrupt without love. And he defines it this way. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut. Doesn't have a swelled head. Doesn't force itself on others. Isn't always me first. Doesn't fly off the handle. Doesn't keep score of the sins of others and doesn't reveal when others grovel. Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything. Trusts God always. Always looks for the best. Never looks back, but keeps going to the end. This is the 57th or 58th time that I get to give something to or do something with Ruth, my wife, on a Valentine's weekend. We don't know what that's going to be yet. We talked about that this morning. And I just think that the privilege of being loved by her and loving her for 56 years of married life and a bit before that as we were cranking up, if you will, has been a part from following Jesus, the single greatest joy of my life. So I think I'm going to love her in one way that she really enjoys it. And that's following Charles Schultz encouragement and get her a few of those Hershey almond chocolate bars. She sometimes says if there's not Hershey almond chocolate in heaven, she's not sure if she wants to go. And now we just put that out around the world. So there you have it. Valentine's weekend 2020. Thank you for your listening ear and your open heart. And when you think about love, I'll give you my my definitions, not mine. I borrowed it from somewhere sometime and I've said it hundreds of times in the last 50 years, but I leave you with it. Love is the accurate estimate and the adequate supply of another person's need. Love is the accurate estimate and adequate supply of another person's need. And Ruth is always quick to say and you need to tell people, Dick, that no human being can absolutely provide everything another human being needs that somewhere in the mix. God needs to be at play. And I think that's probably the best word I can leave you with as we come up to Valentine's Day. God bless. Catch you later. We're out.