Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is all about LOVE!

I was thinking about love this morning and remembering my journey in learning to love unconditionally. I don't want to sound like I have arrived but I'm a lot further along than when I think about how I used to be. In my journey with God, the times He has placed a heavy hand on me it has always been regarding love. I remember years ago being in a small fellowship and after we were there for a while we started seeing signs of problems in the fellowship and I was heart broken hoping this time this was going to be the place where things would work out. One day on our way home from church, I was thinking about the situation in this fellowship and out of the blue God said to me get the log out of your eye before you get the speck out of someone else. Well, I said, "what is the log? I don't have a clue." Silence from God. Not until 2 months later in the middle of the night, I had awakened and was laying there thinking about this fellowship and was heart broken and like before out of no where, God said to me, though they speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love they are like a clanging gong and a noisy cymbal. I said, "that's it, that's it." There is no love! Sadly, I didn't remember several months ago when He told me to get the log out of my eye first.

After this, we were in another fellowship and I watched the same thing taking place there. In the last twelve years, God has taught me a lot about love and how we all need to feel loved and accepted and I mean we need to really love from our heart. None of this, "I love you" and it's not backed up with actions. For someone who needs love, that's only words and it means nothing. We need to love and accept people where they are without trying to change them. When you love people without trying to change them, then they change, because they want to change.

Something that will be forever etched in my memory,was a television show it was either 60 minutes or 20/20 and it was about street people in New York. The whole segment was about street people and following them for a day. What they do, where they go, what they eat, where they sleep etc. At the end of the day, the reporter was under a bridge in New York City talking with a woman who was making her bed for the night. It was winter and she was sleeping in a huge box (like a refrigerator box) and she was taking her blanket out of her cart that she had been pushing all day. The reporter asked her how old she was, she was 37 but she looked like she was 73 (I'm not exaggerating). Then he asked her if she could have anything in the world what would she want? She did not hesitate, she said,"I would just like to know that someone really loved me." Tears were flowing down my cheeks. I'll never forget it because in my mind when he asked her I knew she would probably say a warm home with a nice clean bed. I realized how important unconditional love is and how desperately people need it. Not just the poor of our world, because there are rich people who are poor and they need it just as much.

When I talk about unconditional love people think they have it and I'm not saying that everyone doesn't have it but it has been my experience that most people don't understand unconditional love. That's why my advise to young mothers is learn about unconditional love. That was the LOG in my eye!

As you celebrate this wonderful day of LOVE, ask yourself what does it really mean to love unconditionally.

Always love to you,

galatha