A Valentine’s Gift & Prayer for You
photo from Unsplash
February 14th was often my most busy and exhausting day of the year. No. I am not a florist nor a Hallmark greeting card store. I did serve in two churches spanning several years. I answered calls for those in need of prayer and offered congregational care. Year after year, person after person, the stories were not exact but the longings were the same. Each grieved unmet desires for authentic connection: To know and be known. To love and be loved.
My phone rang off the hook with singles wishing they were married and married people wishing they were single. Be it young or old, divorced or widowed, the cries (literally) were along these lines. Where is my person? What is wrong with me? Why hasn’t God provided? Why did God withhold or take them away?
Those questions are easy to move past as we view them from a distance. But… what about when it gets up close and personal… like today… Valentine’s Day, when coffee shops and restaurants are jammed pack with handholding couples dressed in red while sauntering about. Or perhaps it is the fifty-year old greeting card from a loved one no longer here. Maybe it’s just a tender wish for a close friend to share your heart.
I will not attempt to answer these questions with a quick fix or canned solution. That would be rude and certainly not helpful. I can offer this…
You are worth being loved. Your needs are valid. God really does care.
I wonder… What is God inviting you into today? If you could see Jesus face to face, what might He say to you? Would He pull up a chair with a listening ear? Would He receive you with an offer to give beauty for ashes? Would He maybe just nod with a tearful heart that communicates in the silence that He is with you… no matter what.
Dear Reader, you are in my prayers today. I do not write to an empty page. I write to you.
May I pray for you now?
Lord, I lift up each person who is gathered with us through these words. Please, fill them with hope and comfort. Carry them close to your heart even as a Shepherd carries a lamb. I entrust them into your faithful care. Please, lead them to someone who will steward their heart well. Give creative ideas to meet their needs in healthy and fulfilling ways. And most importantly… help them to personally experience your deep love. Amen
Blessings on you, my friend.
Remember… You are loved! You always have been. You always will be.
And now I would like to share a love song from the 70’s by Dan Fogelberg called Longer Than. I was in high school and our youth group would play this from a cassette tape. Our eyes would close… and we listened as though the Lord was singing it to us. That probably sounds weird to those not there. To me? It remains - forever special.
With no further ado… I offer this song from my heart to yours… Mary
“For this reason I bend my knees before the Father, from whom [m]every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner self, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”