When it comes to love, I want something deeper than one overly commercialized, often horribly sentimentalized, shopping frenzy of a day. To compare Valentines Day to the depth of love that we all can receive through Jesus is like the difference between a gutter mud puddle and the deepest, clearest reaches of the sea. The love of which I speak is wonderfully illustrated in one of Paul’s Letters in the New Testament:

“ You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” 2 Corinthians 3:2-3

This says to me that a real love-letter is always visible on our hearts in the ways that we love others with the love of Christ. A love message is not some sad poetry, written by a marketing department, on a card that will be most likely thrown away eventually.

A love letter written upon a heart stays and it can be counted upon to remain in the celebratory and the distressed times. It can be this indelible because every love of this kind has its source in the One who calls Himself Love. When we love our friends, neighbors, families, even a stranger, with the love letter from the heart we can abide because we love, in all conditions, energized and enlarged by the power of the Holy Spirit, and because of how Jesus came for us in the unfathomable choice to leave His Father to be known as One of us.

The calligraphy of this love comes not in ink, but by the Blood of Christ that was shed for us so that the Spirit of Jesus--the Living God, by His Resurrection--could make His abode in our hearts of love. This writing shines off of faces of encouragement, from hands of service, from eyes that really see, from truly listening (not rehearsing) ears, and by the Truth that astounds because it is not a thing, but a Person--sweet, caring Jesus.

The stationery for this love note is utterly rarefied. Its delivery is not upon the finest-milled paper, it’s not on a billboard, nor is it on a blackboard. Even if you hired a plane to write it upon the sky it could not come close to finding the preciousness of the material of the human heart!

In my marriage to Jim we are constantly writing notes to each other—on birthdays and Christmas especially. We have whole series of letters written (like a shared journal) when we have been going through times of transformation and transition, so that we can look back to these for lessons that we do not want to lose to memory. I greatly admire the form of a letter, especially a love letter.

But if all these messages do not emanate from the one that is rooted and written in Christ’s love upon our hearts, how can they have eternity’s enduring and mighty love as their heart’s theme? If Jim cannot trust in the letter upon my heart because of the care that he sees from me daily, how can he believe in the import of the writing? When Jim loves me in action on the tough days, it is like a brilliant P.S. to any of the written ones that I have ever received, and it says: “My heart, in Christ, is always for you!”

Even a text message on my phone from a friend is a beautiful reminder of her prayerful heart for me. When she shows up at the door, after a tangled traffic jam ride from work with chicken soup for my flu, I see the letter on her heart. And the care that she brought makes the soup greatly more healing, because I could read her godly heart in the delivery.

When the face of a friend says; “You are precious for just who you are, because of the amazing child of God way that He formed you, with all your contradictions and kindnesses, and mystery--across her lovely forehead I see the postmark reading: “A letter from Christ, from your loved-one’s heart.”

So on this February 14^th I am sending you a single blood red rose that caught the sun’s light in such a way that it inscribed a heart upon its tender petals. The image speaks to me about the letters written upon the hearts of those who have loved me with Christ’s love--that they are an endlessly fascinating missive and one that I never want to stop reading, because it exceeds all of the great literature in the world. My heart is humbled today to pray that the Lord will make the letter on my heart unmistakably one of His own--overflowing with love that runs for us with the scent of the rose (just for us) all about Him.