By JOIN ME for Day 5? We’re spending 9 days in the Upper Room of our hearts with both 💘 Saints & Sinners as we prepare to celebrate the true meaning behind Saint Valentine’s Day:
📖 READ SCRIPTURE:
“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” – Luke 6:27-28
💝 REFLECT:
David’s name means “beloved,” which he was by God and still is by millions of Bible believers. He was a fitting type of Christ since they were both born in Bethlehem, both were anointed and both were shepherds and kings. But not everyone loved him; he was hated by his own father-in-law, King Saul, his loyalists and all the enemies of Israel. God’s favor on David provoked jealousy and placed a bullseye on his back. If God be for you, though, it doesn’t matter who is against you. The anointing doesn’t exempt us from trouble, it empowers us to overcome it.
Loving those who hate us can be…challenging, to say the least. And yet this is exactly what God tells us to do.
As we’ve been studying King David’s heart to prepare our own hearts to be God’s Beloved this Valentine’s Day, let us remember that love is not so much a feeling but rather an action. David did many things according to his own feelings. But that is not what made Him God’s Beloved. His feelings often lead him into sin. It was his actions that followed those times of failing which caught the attention of the Father.
It’s okay to feel wounded by the hatred of others. It’s okay to desire better. But let us place those expectations of love where they rightly can be returned to us. God alone can satisfy our hearts. And He alone is well pleased when we choose to respond in love even in the face of hatred.
🍎 SAINT WISDOM:
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
“Pure love … knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love – love, and always love.”
– Divine Mercy in My Soul (140), St. Faustina
“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor… Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”
-Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
My director, Jesus, does not teach me to count my acts, but to do everything for love, to refuse Him nothing, to be pleased when He gives me a chance to prove to Him that I love Him – but all this in peace – in abandonment.
-St. Therese of Lisieux in a letter to Celine, July 6, 1893
Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.
-Saint Francis of Assisi
🕊 LET US PRAY:
Father, you have shown us the way to love. We love because you first loved us. Thank you Jesus for showing us just how much we are known and loved by our Father in Heaven. Holy Spirit, Come. Transform our hearts so that we may love others with the Love we have been given.
Blessed Mother of Our Lord, Holy angels and saints of Heaven, especially Saint Valentine, pray for me, that my heart may become more like God’s Beloved ones, so that I too may be a light to others from that city on a hill. In the Holy name of Jesus, King of My Heart, Amen.
