by Jordyn van Gaalen

The Ultimate Sacrifice

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking this SoundCloud link.

“Dear friends: let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1 John 4:7-12 New International Version

When I think of Valentine’s Day, I picture giant stuffed animals and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. There’s this mushy aura wrapped in bright pinks and reds and fluff. I think about walking through those obnoxious aisles in grocery stores during the late weeks of January and early weeks of February. And I honestly can’t wait for the “holiday” to pass. I just don’t see love in light of such images.

My experience with love has never looked anything like what I see surrounding Valentine’s Day. I see love more like a mud run. The image I have is sticky, exhausting, and crawling through muck. Like a mud run, it is a team event, something that takes fight and dedication and hard work and leaning into those around us. There is a unique blend of coarse and awkward and beautiful.

Love is grace and forgiveness and second chances. 

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
1 Peter 4:7-12 (NIV)

God showed us the perfect example of love in Jesus Christ coming down to earth as a baby – a dependent, crying, pooping-in-a-diaper baby. It was shown in Christ being born in a manger inside a barn – a stinky, dingy, cattle-filled barn. The God of the Universe, the Creator of all things, came to walk and live and struggle with us as a human being. 

The ultimate display of love is Christ dying on a wooden cross, draped in blood and bruises and rusty nails. The sacrifice of His life that He surrendered in order to have life with us. 

I pray to give and open my eyes to the kind of love that God so freely pours, not only as this holiday rolls around, but every day of the year.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado