We seem to have a need for love, and a need to express love. We look for love, we hope for love, we just love love.

Most songs written are about love. Some are just "silly love songs", but we love to listen to them or sing them anyway. Millions of books are written every year about love, and who has not watched a love story in a movie!

Love generally makes us, and other people, happy. Love seems to bring out the best in people, so they are kind, thoughtful, considerate, and even given to self sacrifice.

The absence of love makes us sad. The failure of love, or the rejection of love, hurts. Heartbreak can have not only emotional consequences, but physical ones too. Sometimes love seems all too fleeting - a flash-in-the-pan, hard-to-hold-on-to thing. An emotion or passion that strikes out of the blue, but fizzes out or some wrong done starts to erode trust.

We understand love doesn't always last, and we often don't expect it to anyway. Relationships end. People move away, or move on. Love fades, or a new attraction takes its place. People "fall in" and "fall out" of love all the time. Sometimes the memory of love is all that remains.

This Valentine's Day, let's not just think about the romantic kind of love, but the enduring kind. The one that doesn't rely on chocolates and roses and pretty cards. The love that's not out to get something for ourselves by a bit of sweet talking or flamboyant gifts. Let's think about the love that flows out to others and spreads kindness and goodwill wherever it passes. Let's think about the love that saves lives, builds bridges between people, forgives wrongs, and ends wars. It's the love that doesn't give up, doesn't stop, and doesn't get less. It's the love that grows, matures and multiplies. It's the love that shines through pain and suffering. It's the love that comforts and heals. It's the love that inspires, and the love that humbles us.

It's a love for not just one day in the year, but every day. It's God's love.

"God pours His love into our hearts that it might flow out to others."

(image from 4Vector.com)