Valentine’s Day is thought to be a great day to express your emotion of love for others. Much can be debated about whether this “Hallmark holiday” accomplishes that goal or not. But regardless of your conclusion on the holiday itself, it can be a great day to reflect on love. Love can be a powerful emotion. But it is also so much more than an emotion. Love is the decision to put another person before yourself. Love is the commitment to keep showing up and caring for another person no matter what. Love is what drove our God to create us. Love is what motivated Him to give up His only Son, Jesus, to make atonement for our sins on the cross. A love so intense; so extreme; so unfathomable that the word emotion doesn’t even begin to describe it in a God-sense. This Valentine’s Day let’s consider some ways we can love others because Christ first loved us.

Valentine’s Day is a great time to talk about faith and love. Here’s some ideas:

• Exchanging Cards at School-The elaborately decorated boxes, the choosing of “just the right card” to not say more or less than you want to say, and of course the dilemma of if that favorite movie character adorning your cards will be seen as cool or babyish. Kids think about all of these things when it comes to Valentine’s exchanges at school, but what should all this really mean? Valentine’s day at school is simply an opportunity to let classmates know that they are loved. Someone cares. As our whole lives are to be about as Christians, this is another opportunity to share that important message.
• What is Love?-Love is something we hear about all the time. But do we really think that saying “I love pizza” and “I love my family” means the same thing? Not at all! Love is throughout Scripture. In fact, Scripture itself is God’s love story for us. 1 John 4:7-21 has a great description of God’s love. Discuss how God’s love for us impacts how we are to love others.
• Who is St. Valentine?-St. Valentine is a priest in the 200’s who performed secret marriage ceremonies for Christian couples because the government had an edict forbidding men to marry. [They were in a time of war and wanted their soldiers to be unwed as they were thought to be better fighters.] St. Augustine wanted to promote the Biblical understanding of marriage between one man and one woman which was not common in the culture of the time. Talk about God’s design for marriage.
• Red, White & Pink-Red symbolizes love. The greatest example of love is Christ’s blood shed on the cross as payment for our sins. White symbolizes purity. The greatest example of this is the purity we have in the forgiveness of sins Christ won for us on the cross. When red and white are combined they make pink. They remind us of the way the colors work together to tell the complete love story of Christ for us.
• Hearts-The heart is thought to be the center of emotion. While this is actually a myth because our emotions originate in our minds, it’s a reminder that all of ourselves are so closely linked. That’s why we are called to “love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind” (Mark 12:30) or all of who we are. 

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 charges us to talk about faith as we go about life, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the way, when you lie down and when you get up.”

When you see the colors and symbols we generally associate with Valentine’s Day this year, it’s our challenge to see past the things of this world and into the great love God has for us.