“I was asleep, but my heart was awake…”             Song of Songs 5:2

Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine.   There are many different versions of the reason for this holiday, but the short of the long story is that the Church ‘Christianized’ a pagan festival. 

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. Sadly though, there are people who never receive the valentine they are looking for.  They are hoping that there is someone, somewhere who loves them.  They have sent out valentines in a myriad of different ways throughout their lives and are still waiting for a reply.

In 1963, the United States Supreme Court outlawed prayer in America's public schools. One of the plaintiffs in that case was America's best-known and most visible atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Over the years, she was a vocal proponent of atheism and an aggressive campaigner against religion in public life. Then one day she vanished, leaving her sports car in an airport parking lot and $500,000 missing from the American Atheists Association bank account. The Internal Revenue Service seized Mrs. O'Hair's home to pay her creditors and some back taxes, and one of the items at auction were her diaries. One entry said, "The whole idiotic hopelessness of human relations descends upon me. Tonight, I cried and cried, but even then feeling nothing." The thing that really struck me were the four words that showed up frequently in her entries; "Somebody, somewhere, love me."

I don't know about you, but that cry for love in Mrs. O'Hair's diary touches something inside of me. In a way, her cry is the cry of every human heart, "Somebody, somewhere, love me." And for many who do believe in God, there is still that awful vacuum. It's possible to believe in God, to do God's things, and to still miss the deep experience of his love. And without that love, the emptiness and loneliness in our heart is never satisfied - no matter how many human loves we experience.

While you are probably nowhere near an atheist, it could be that you've invested a lot in good things that could easily become other gods: your career, your children, your projects, your hobbies, maybe your friends, your charity work, even your spiritual pursuits. But the deep, aching sense of aloneness seldom seems to go away. Every earth-love has ultimately either failed you or failed to satisfy you. So, after all these years, your heart is still whispering - maybe even shouting - "Somebody, somewhere, love me."

A valentine from the Word of God describes the only love that can ever truly answer this deepest cry of the human heart. It's found in Romans 8:38-39,

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There it is – unconditional, immeasurable, unending love.
God wants you to experience that love more than you can imagine, so much that he sacrificed the One he loves the most for you - his one and only Son, Jesus. The reason we are missing that love is because we've pushed God out of our lives with our sin. We've lived ‘my way’ instead of God's way, over and over again and that has left us separated from God and from his love. Yet God has  lavished his love on you by sending Jesus to die in your place, and receive judgment for your sin.
Jesus is the ‘somebody, somewhere’ that your life has been lonely for. And you don't have to live one more day without his love.

If you are missing this great love that you desire so much, respond by placing all your trust in Christ and know that there is nothing, no one, and that not even the powers of hell can separate you from God’s love through Christ.  You can experience that right now just by asking God for it because he is awaiting your reply.

Art