With February rapidly approaching the thoughts of many are turning towards Valentine’s Day so I thought I’d share a few Valentine’s Day statistics with you:
-85% of all Valentine cards are bought by women.
-73% of flowers are bought by men, and only 27% are by women.
-Chocolate and candy sales reach profits of $1,011 billion during Valentines.
Hopefully you’re not one of the 15% who sent flowers to yourself, but from what I can tell people have a love/hate relationship with Valentine’s Day. It’s a holiday built around love, which is probably one of the most wonderful, confusing, frustrating and rewarding feelings we experience as human beings. We use the word a love great deal in a variety of ways. Some of us use it quite frequently, while others use it hardly at all.
If we look to the Bible we’ll easily see why love is so confusing to us. In the Greek there are four words to describe what we often use one word for in the English language: agápe, éros, philia and storge.
Philia is a word from the modern Greek language that simply means “friendship”. It’s the word that we’d most commonly use when we tell our friends that we love them, although a couple of other forms could be used in certain circumstances. It’s probably the most freely used as we tell someone we appreciate we love them even though the feelings are strictly platonic.
Éros, on the other hand, is the word we’d most often hear young lovers tell one another. It means “passionate love, with sensual desire and longing”. It’s the kind of love that is built more on sexual desire than what we’d consider love. It’s also the kind of love that fades the fastest once the newness of a relationship is over or the desire fades.
Storge is from both the modern and ancient Greek and means “affection”. This would probably be the form of love we would use to describe how we feel about a relative or close friend. Most likely this type of love would conjure up sentimental feelings for the other person say like for even a teacher or coach who was influential in a person’s life.
The finale form of love is agápe. This type of love is what we would consider to be “true love”. It’s love without condition freely given without expecting anything in return.
Is there any wonder why we’re so confused about the concept of love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 describes what agápe love is supposed to be about:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
This kind of love is the kind of love that you see glamorized in fairy tales and movies. However, in reality it can often feel like it doesn’t truly exist. The truth of the matter is that while it is rare, it does indeed exist. The problem is we often confuse ourselves with the other types of love or we too quickly settle for less than this type of love.
If you”re not currently in a relationship this Valentine’s Day, how about finding ways to express your love and appreciation for the other people in your life? Try and find ways to let them know how much they mean to you and much you care for them. Just remember, it’s okay to tell God you love Him too!
The Prodigal Pastor 