The Practice of Gratitude and Love on Valentine’s Day
I woke this morning to the strong winds and driving rain of Cyclone Gabrielle as it slides down the east coast of New Zealand, and wondered about the extend of damage it has caused in my city and the country in general. I know of one friend who has a tree down, just missing their house.
I’m grateful for my warm and dry house, knowing that there are others for which this will not be their experience today.
I’m grateful for modern weather forecasting which was able to predict and warn us, because two days ago was warm and sunny, with no indication that this very atypical storm was coming.
I’m grateful for friends and family who add so much to my life
I’m grateful for my wife, who unswervingly speaks into my life with love and boldness which I sometimes find uncomfortable, yet know I need and benefit from.
It’s Valentine’s Day today, and I would like to share a prayer by Pete Greig from his Lectio 365 daily devotional this morning.
I pray today for those in love, those out of love, and those in between. I remember especially those who find themselves a little bit lonelier than normal.
Lord, I do not pray today for loved-up couples, exchanging overpriced flowers and foil-wrapped hearts, leaking pheromones like diesel fumes at candlelit dinners. I’m pretty sure they will be OK (for now).
Instead, I hereby dedicate this happy-crappy day to anyone caring for a loved-one with a chronic illness of body, mind or soul. Lord let them be a little bit more okay because I prayed.
Flame of Love, melt our tiny, tinny chocolate hearts. Wherever marriages have grown cold, calloused with conflict, or mired in the mundane, would you please rekindle the fires of true romance?
Attend to the elderly gentleman gazing at a fading sepia photograph in a silver frame of a wedding in another time. Look at him and look with him and be with him in the remembering and the unremembering too.
And, on this day named after one of your unmarried saints, would You please bring a little unexpected joy to every wistful soul buying flowers for themselves? May their daffodils last longer and shine brighter than the overpriced red roses that also caught their eye.
God of all comfort, strengthen single parents on this difficult day. Let their kids be kind, let their teens tidy their bedrooms, and if that’s a miracle too far (I realise You’ve got a lot on in the world right now), could they at least be less grumpy and initiate a hug at bedtime?
And so, may the arms of love, flung wide on the cross, embrace the unlovely and unloving parts of my world, my workplace, and my life today. Forgive me, I pray, for this cheap, hysterical, isolating thing I have sometimes made of love, of life, and of You.
Amen.
May you know Gods’ love today in a special and meaningful way
Happy Valentines Day
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