Happy Valentine's Day

My high school Bible study leader once asked us, “What is the one word God would use to describe you that you would never say about yourself?” Without thinking, the word that came into my mind was “Beautiful.” 

My mind reacted the way I picture a body reacting to a bad organ transplant, attacking the word at full-force, trying to find a way to make it dissolve. But it wouldn’t go away, and slowly I felt myself melding to it, accepting it. God thought I was beautiful, something no boy, no friend, no person besides my immediate and extremely biased family members had ever thought me. 

God thought that I was beautiful, made me beautiful, and had told me so. It was the first time I recall hearing something directly from God, and it was also the first moment I felt truly, personally loved by God.

Sure, I knew God loved me. The Bible tells me so, right? Lots of people told me so. Even in my gratitude for Jesus’ death on the cross which made it possible for me to have fire insurance for when this long and torturous life is over, it never felt particularly personal. Like maybe Jesus had died for everyone else and thought, “Eh, yeah, I guess she can come too.” I don’t think I’ve ever talked about that before.

Back before I understood, I looked at God and thought, “So, I have to live this hard life of a Christian and follow all of your rules, but I didn’t ask you to die for me. I didn’t ask to owe you anything.” But I still didn’t want to go to hell, so I went one step further with, “I didn’t ask for you to make me in the first place.” I resented God for the existence and salvation he gave freely that I could not possibly understand.

And then that moment happened. And something clicked. The one thing I had wanted to hear from someone, he told me. And it wasn’t about my weight, or my nose, or my hair color, it was about me. The me he created because he wanted to. Because he loved me, and wanted me to exist so he could love me. Because I was beautiful to him.

Maybe it’s just because date night was yesterday, but today, I’m not thinking about any other love, any other Valentine, but God.

I got my old Bible off the shelf—the one I don’t read much anymore, because it’s started to disintegrate. I wanted it today so I could see the places I have marked, the verses I have poured over and underlined time and time again, the places where I felt his love. I wanted to  sit in it for a couple hours while I’m home by myself.

What stood out aren’t the usual bits that we turn to or post on the internet. Instead, they’re the little quiet places where, even in a completely random context, God sent me a message, reminding me of his love.

Like in Deuteronomy, when he’s, once again, dealing with the Israelite’s rebellion but reminds them, “ And in the Wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.”

When he was describing his wrath as a “whirling tempest” in Jeremiah and says, “Am I God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God far away?” And I recall when I felt so distant, and he came at me like a fire before my face to remind me that he’s not some far off thing, but is here—and wants to hear from me. 

When talking about The Judgement of the Nations in Joel and says, “The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the LORD is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel,” and he reminds me that the heat of his wrath is for the Enemy, and the light from his fire is for me.  

In Amos when he says, “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” and I remember that is power, his love, his voice is greater than any other force. That it brings down mountains and calls even the most lowly to action, and his voice calls for me.

At the end of Zephaniah, he says, “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you with his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

From times when I couldn’t imagine anyone, let alone the creator of the starts and the oceans and the source of the light of the sun loving me, he did. He rejoices over us with gladness. He exults over us with singing.

From times when I would watch movies where a boy was so excited to even be in the same room with a girl and thought, “I wonder if anyone will ever love me like that,” and I listened to songs where men poured out their hearts full of love to these nameless women, and I wondered if that could ever be real.

It already was.

So, whether your celebrating Singles Awareness Day, or going out with your spouse, or perhaps a date where you have no idea what to expect, or if you think it’s a stupid commercialized holiday cheapening our meaning of relationships, or if you like to go around telling people about Saint Valentine’s imprisonment, torture, and beheading, I hope you spend some time with your first and forever love today, and let him remind you how beautiful you are to him.