Evan H. Hopkins said, "While it is faith that makes all things possible, it is love that makes all things easy."
In the end, in every area of life, you are judged by how loving you were.
"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Ephesians 4:2
We must love each other and also love life itself. Try to actively love your life and it will love you right back. Love is appreciating to such a degree that you feel overwhelmed with joy.
If you love someone, let them know it. Never miss an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7
Because God is love, unless we love, we do not follow God. This is true every day of the week.
1 John 4:8 "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Spiritually, love is not about getting, but giving.
Make it a rule and keep it every day... Never, if possible, go to bed at night without being able to say, "I have made one human being at least a little happier, a little better, because I was loving this day."
It arrives so fresh off the heels of Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's easy to overlook. You've just barely gotten used to writing the new year on your bank checks. For all practical purposes, it's simply the typical weekday between February 13 and February 15.
But this is not a day for practical purposes.
This is Valentine's Day. And Sam forgot it.
Sam's wife had a card addressed to him, hidden in her top dresser drawer. Her gift to him was under her dresses in the closet. She waited for him to make the first move, to end this little dodge of his. There he was, sitting down to watch television at 7:30 at night as if he might be camped out there till bedtime... as if he'd actually forgotten what day this is!
Finally, at 10 P.M., when Sam had stumbled upstairs to brush his teeth, he found his wife sitting bolt upright in bed. Somehow the temperature felt noticeably cooler in that room than in the other parts of the house.
"What's the matter? What'd I do?" He did a super-quick scan of his usual offenses. Everything checked out.
"Tomorrow morning," she said through clenched teeth, "I expect to find a gift in the driveway that goes from zero to two hundred in less than six seconds. And it had better be there!"
With that, she snatched her pillow and blanket and trudged off, presumably to the downstairs sofa, leaving Sam standing there looking very unmanly, totally exposed as a Valentine forgetter. But his pride wasn't about to be threatened so easily.
The next morning his wife found a gift box in the driveway. She tore it open and looked inside.
It was a bathroom scale.
Sam has been missing since Friday.
Pray that you both will be sensitive to one another's needs for romance and love on the other 364 days of the year.