It’s not just hype and marketing, it’s true. The heart does go pitter-patter for that which is beautiful and catches the eye, and that which captures our affections.

We all know what it is to adore things that don’t adore us back, chocolate, a beautiful home, a spa retreat, or Legos and Star Wars if you ask my boys. But, don’t we all find our greatest affection for relationship–for people that love us back and make us feel….special?

And so…all the hearts, the professions of love, and the arrows of cupid that pierce the hearts of the one we hope to make our own.

With all the promise of excitement, adoration, joy, and companionship, we can’t blame our kids for eagerly anticipating the experience of finding love for themselves. And at the proper time, we anticipate it for them as well.

But on this Valentine’s Day, I stop to consider: Am I presenting the beauty, the adoration, the love of Christ in such a way as to draw my children’s affections? Do I speak of Him and my relationship with the Lord so as to cause them to desire such a love for themselves?

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Auguste Toulmouche, The Lost Love

Life is full of disappointments.

I know, I know–it’s a harsh thing to say, especially on Valentine’s Day! We don’t like to admit it, but there it is. Anyone who’s been alive more than … approximately thirty seconds knows it, too–though the newborn babe would have some trouble finding the words! Surely the milk comes too slowly, the air is too cold, the diaper is scratchy. We grow up and the breakfast isn’t ready, it’s raining for the birthday party, the grade is lower than we’d hoped.

Growing up only offers more time for a heart to be slowly battered by troubles great and small.

Friends betray, loves are lost, our gifts are smaller than those around us. And if we do not give our hearts to the Father God for safekeeping; if we are not very careful, the brokenness of a fallen world can plunge us into despair. [Read more...]