|
|
Since the December
release of the romantic comedy, "You've Got Mail", about
a couple whose relationship begins on-line, some internet dating
and chat sites report as much as a 30% surge. In matters of love,
time and again it is apparent that we have stored energy. In
the image of our Creator, we were designed to love and be loved.
However, this desire often seems to go wanting. Given a possibility
of something or someone to respond to, we come to life.
From teens to single young adults, to married men and women, too many people live feeling and believing they are at a love deficit. Some of the deficit is real. Some of it is normal and healthy. At times God allows us to deeply feel a need before he satisfies it as was the case with Adam in Genesis 2. Our emptiness can also be the consequence of alienation and harm, from self-centered choices of others or of our own, that requires healing and change. However, this does not explain it all.
The writer of Psalm 37 assures us that in the midst of many distractions, hurts and frustrations of life, we can know the fulfillment for which we hunger inwardly.
I am convinced that a significant amount of the emptiness we feel stems from our failure to recognize and deliberately accept the love we have been given. God's love has come to us in packages we may have already opened and now take for granted, or that possibly, we have never fully opened, examined, and appreciated. Often God's love gifts are staring us in the face but we're overlooking them.
In the Sunday worship messages of February 14 and 21, I am planning to take a look at what the Bible says about the love gifts God has given us as men and women, whether we are married or single and lead us in considering how we can more fully enjoy the satisfaction those gifts are intended to provide.
-- Steve Wilson, Pastor