Love and Lent
Today is Valentine’s Day and also the first day of Lent. The first lesson tells people what they are to do when they first enter the land God is giving them. God had shown his love by rescuing them from slavery in Egypt – this is going to be a way of saying not just thank you to God but saying ‘I love you’. The second lesson is the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness – Jesus is showing he loves God more than anything else the tempter can offer him.
How do we show our love to people we care about? Is a messy bedroom saying ‘Mum, I really love you’? Of course its not just little people throw tantrums. So its not enough just to say ‘I love you’ to someone we love – we have to show that love in the way we treat them, in the way we speak to them, in the way we appreciate them.
It is the same with God. We say we love God – we need to think a bit about how we show that. We come to Church this morning to sing our praises, to pray for ourselves and for other people – and that is important. But God wants more than that – In the Bible we read ‘If anyone says he loves God and hates his brother he is a liar’ God really does care about how we treat one another.
God has given us this wonderful world to live in – like that messy bedroom we have messed it up. So this Sunday we are thinking of love, our love for one another and our love for God. On Valentines day we think of how we show our love to those who are special to us. Today we are invited to do something practical to show our love for God in doing something tidy up this particular corner of this beautiful word that God has made for our enjoyment.