This year, the church calendar has Easter falling as early as it can. This means Lent is also falling as early as it can. This means Lent is falling the day BEFORE Valentine's Day. Celebrating with excess and richesse is out of the question. Lent is about penitence and preparation...preparing for the day of Christ's death and the passionate betrayal of Him to the cross. It's odd to juxtapose this time of dark in the church calendar with the commercial explosion of hearts, pink and doilies. So, for Lent this year, I am giving up Valentine's Day.
This does not mean I am giving up love, nor does it mean I won't grant my kids' Valentine's Day wishes. No. It does mean that I will not be celebrating the glorification of romantic love. Instead, I am going to use the overlapping of Lent and V-day to seek unconditional love. Isn't Vaentine's Day love expression the opposite of unconditional love? It's bedecked in costume. It's a love that comes with an extended arm bearing gifts of sugar and hearts. It's love that is created and born out of the heightened expectations of a Hallmark holiday.
However, at the center of it is a craving for love. A craving to love and be loved. A giving over of oneself to loving thoughts and caring gestures for a day. Seeking to be connected, rather than disconnected. Isn't this just what Jesus did? Didn't He come to us to connect us and love us? Maybe I don't have to give up Valentine's Day for Lent, but I do want to reframe it, see it in a different light. I want to imagine a love so great it is completely without condition.
A love so all emcompassing, it can barely be imagined by a human mind.
A love that forgives and forgets our shortcomings at all times.
The love God holds for us cannot be trimmed into a heart shape or even improved by a box of chocolates. It is pure and complete and it is there for us every day. Not just on Valentine's Day and not just during Lent and Easter. Not just on Christmas. It's something to be grateful for and to bask in every single day of our lives.
Amen.
I am going to try to remember the cookie aisle from my childhood. I remember that Oreos were just a cookie. A singular cookie you could define as chocolate with cream filling. Period. Chips Ahoy were cchocolatechip...they were crunchy and tasted faintly of cardboard. They came in one size of cookie and one flavor, color and texture. Maybe there were two box sizes depending on your penchant for cookies or size of your family. There were not the staggering number of choices a stroll down the cookie aisle affords today.
I am amazed, and even might say appalled, by the variety. There are currently birthday cake, chocolate on chocolate, chocolate mint, chocolate peanut butter, vanilla, half vanilla/half chocolate, doublestuff, strawberry, Neapolitan ice cream berry blast...there are FORTY FIVE varieties!!! How incredibly overwhelming. The Oreo brand has merely become a vehicle for different flavors and colors: an experimental platform for heaping on the artificial ingredients. It's downright frightening. Chips Ahoy and the other brands offers no respite. And do NOT get me started on toothpastes...or shampoos...
