A NEW KIND OF LOVE...

What is love? (Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me. No more...)

Now that really is an excellent question ( minus the weird song bit). This Saturday couples all over the country will be expressing their love for one another through a well planned and executed romantic experience or by a slightly panicked BP Garage visit.

Each year during Valentines in the UK, £22 million is spent on flowers including 7 million red roses, 12 million cards are sent and 30 million WUBMV texts are sent every single February 14th.

I recently asked a load of young people what they thought love was and the responses were both predictable and interesting at the same time. The two main ideas coming through were that love is both emotional and physical. It is emotional in the sense that is an intense feeling people have for each other and physical in that an assortment of sexual phrases were mentioned over and over again during the brief survey!

One of the challenges of seeing love as purely emotional or physical is that feelings and experiences change so often that without a sense of commitment they can leave LOVE itself as throwaway or upgradable as the latest gadget or gismo in our consumer culture. We tend to band around the word love as fairly throwaway sometimes don't we? I love my cup of tea. I love my football. I love movies. And I really love that iPhone.

But what if love could be seen as emotional, physical and spiritual as well? One of the best ways I like to see what "spiritual" love could look like is to explore the life of the original St Valentine. The most popular belief about St Valentine is that he was a priest from Rome in the third century. Emperor Claudius had banned marriage because he thought married men were bad soldiers. Valentine thought this was unfair, so he broke the rules and arranged marriages in secret. When Claudius found out, Valentine was sentenced to death and thrown in jail. There, he fell in love with the jailor's blind daughter. When he was taken to be killed on 14 February he sent her a love letter signed "From your Valentine".

What I like about this story is that we see a kind of spiritual love expressed by St Valentine that:

a) Thinks more about others than Self
b) Sees beyond the Sacrifice
c) Looks beneath the Surface

This new kind of love is what we see God wants us to express in 1 Corinthians 13. This Love never gives up. This Love cares more for others than for self. This Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. It is a Love that doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head and doesn't force itself on others. This spiritual love isn't always "me first."

I am reminded that God himself is Love.

And it is this new kind of "God love" I want to give others and the kind I need to receive right now. St Valentine gave his life because he refused to believe that in the midst of a time of war and turmoil the light of love could be extinguished forever. I am not sure if Valentine himself is real or is just a legend, but it reminds me a little bit of true story I know where the sacrifice of a hero meant that the blind prisoner could go free. And that story is one that is not celebrated with the giving of chocolates and flowers once a year, but it is marked by the giving of our lives everyday...