The month of February brings to mind “love”! Valentines, flowers and chocolates loom large in advertisements enticing people to “show love” by buying and giving these tangible items to their love ones! Love is more than what can be demonstrated through giving tangible temporary items! Firstly, give your heart and soul to God. Show Him love by keeping His ultimate commandment:
Matthew 22:37-39: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Sadly, we people of color were torn from our land and our people, kept separate from our native group to avoid communication, mistreated and indoctrinated through the diaspora onward to have no self-worth, encouraged to vilify, denigrate, disparage one another and yes to even kill one another. Although we are 157 years out of slavery, this mindset still permeates our people! This must stop- Now! We say Black Lives Matter and this is true; but, Black lives must matter to Black People too! Black people must know; we too were made in His image and in His sight we have worth! We are to follow Gods command to love each other as He has loved us (John 15:12)
We must take pride in knowing that in just 157 years, we; the downtrodden in society, have gone from the field house to the White House (Barack Obama). We have gone from uneducated and illiterate to the halls of the Ivy League, U.S. Supreme Court (Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas) aiding in the taking the first American to the moon in 1969 (Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Kathyrn Peddrew and Mary W. Jackson), helping develop the vaccine for COVID (Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett), integral in facilitating testing and vaccination in urban communities (Dr. Ala Sanford of Philadelphia) and countless other accomplishments from the mundane to inconceivable. If we are to rise above the far reaching shackles of slavery, we must learn and practice loving and supporting each other. If not, we will fall as a people! (Mark 3:25: “And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand”).
God is love. 1 John 4:7-11: “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”. We are to love God first, follow His will for our lives, love ourselves and be confident enough to love others.
Love is fundamental to the Christian faith.
We learn true love by knowing and having a personal relationship with God.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
To answer the question: What does love have to do with it? Everything! Show love, not just on Valentine ’s Day; but, every day. You will please God and shame the devil.
