What is Love?

What is love?

I cannot escape those haunting (and sometimes annoying) words from the soundtrack of “A Night at the Roxbury.”

What is love?
Baby, don’t hurt me
Baby, don’t hurt me no more.

Nothing drives home our main struggle with modern love better: a lack of commitment. We experience love as painful largely because we don’t understand or even endeavor to understand true love. True love has sacrifice in its essence.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

Today, on Valentine’s Day we celebrate romantic love, sappy love, passionate love, and our love of chocolate. Yet, I wonder if we miss even the point of the original holiday. Did you know that Saint Valentine was martyred for his faith in Jesus? It’s the only reliable truth we know about him (he is surprisingly obscure and he has very few early or reliable accounts about his life or death). It seems fitting that we ought to remember the original reason for this holiday and the defining aspect of Valentine’s life.

Personally, I am most thankful for the sacrificial love that my forever Valentine, Heather, showers on me every day. Although pastors no longer officially take on a formal vow of poverty, we will never be wealthy as a couple. Heather never complains about us not keeping up with the rest of the North Dallas elite and she works hard at Thirty-One to help us remain faithful to our calling to apartment ministry. And she puts up with me! She forgives my faults and she’s patient with my vices (like my video game addiction). She forgives me when I am being a jerk (pastors are good at being jerks too!). She points me to the light of Jesus when I am lost in dark nights of my soul. God has blessed me with a wonderfully sacrificial and giving wife that reminds me how much Jesus sacrificed and gave for me.

So, who can you send an encouraging note to that has sacrificially loved you?